Reply to All Kids Are Gifted, a Sports Metaphor

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Typically they do end up in the top percent not just by IQ but in grades and elsewhere as well.  My experience has been that the kids that were in G&T were also valedictorian, et cetera - otherwise generally top in their classes and most got scholarships for college.  One for example was also in the top 0.5% nationally on the PSAT and ended up getting a full scholarship to an Ivy.[/quote]

I'll put my anecdotes against yours: A lot of the "non-gifted" kids in my high school class have done as well or better in their careers than the "gifted" kids.[/quote]

Let's run through your scenario and look at some example numbers to delve into what the statistics would more typically look like and why your anecdotal information isn't really all that relevant - You are perfectly free to talk about the 10 non-gifted kids who went on to get their Ph.D., the 20 who ended up running a big successful business, et cetera, as compared to the 7 gifted kids who got their Ph.D. and the 12 who ended up running a big successful business but consider that maybe it's a class size of 600 where you are comparing the non-gifted population (97%, or 582 kids) where 10 out of 582 (or 1.7%) got Ph.Ds. and 20 out of 582 (or 3.4%) ended up running a big successful business as compared to the gifted population (3%, or just 18 kids) where 7 out of 18 (or 38%) got a Ph.D. and where 12 out of 18 (or 66%) ended up running a big successful business.[/quote]

You're assuming it's binary. Either you're gifted (yay, you!), or you're non-gifted (pfft). It doesn't work that way.[/quote]

No, it's quantifiable and it's on a spectrum. I never assumed or said anything about binary.  But that doesn't change how the statistics typically work out.  The kids on the gifted end of the spectrum with IQ scores at the upper end of the percentiles are extremely likely to be on the honor roll, to go on to college, to have successful careers than their many of their peers will.  Is a kid at the 96th percentile significantly distinguishable as compared to a kid on the 93rd percentile?  Probably statistically insignificant (maybe the kid at the 93rd just had a bad day) - and maybe not on many levels.  Is there a magic threshold to make it "binary"?  I certainly don't think so.  But that kid at the 96th percentile WILL be significantly distinguishable as compared to a kid at the 50th percentile.  And meanwhile, the kid at the far bottom of the scale is definitely distinguishable from the kid at the 50th and is probably in a special needs program.  We recognize the difference between the kid at the 4th percentile versus the 50th percentile but the difference between the kid at the 50th percentile and the kid at the 96th percentile is equally as big.[/quote]

A student at the 4th percentile doesn't get special education on the basis of their IQ.  Some students at that level have disabilities, of course, just like some students with IQs at the 96th %ile, have disabilities, but the 4th %ile by itself does not qualify a child for anything.
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