Article on gifted ed. brings out the cranks
Tuesday, March 4, 2008Written by: Alan Gottlieb
Todays Denver Post article about expanding admission criteria for the Denver Public Schools Highly Gifted and Talented program is eliciting some ugly reaction, to judge from the papers website. Part of the problem, undoubtedly, stems from the storys unfortunate headline and choice of photo neither of which, by the way, are the fault of the reporter, Jeremy P. Meyer.
Heres what a friend wrote to Jeremy today:
I thought your story today was very interesting and seemed to be well-reported. I am concerned about the headlines and photos, however. (Im a former Post reporter I know you dont have any involvement in either.) Minorities do not get a lift in the program, as you described it. Rather, its focused on poor and ESL kids. The photos exacerbate the problem both focus on what appear to be black children. There is no benefit given to black children, as I understand your story. If you need proof that the headline and photos give an incorrect impression, look at the following comment:
Love the message this sends. A score of 75 from a black kid is equal to a 90 from a White kid. Finally the true racists are being honest. Achievement at school is nice and all, but it takes a back seat to social justice. School administrators would rather promote a black kid with a C average than a White student with straight As. Thats been the case for several years. But at least now, they are being upfront about it. A color blind society? Not when noticing color gets us all these perks!
My friend is right. And the ugly comments keep on coming. Heres a small sample:
What a crock of doo doo.
Chihuahua ,Colorado . Sickening. These kids DO NOT deserve extra credit based on their race or illegality or *economic disadvantage*. TOTAL, COMPLETE BS. My kid is highly gifted based on brain power, not some wimpy *extra credit for being illegals* system. YUCK.***
Sure give the illegal immigrant kids a bonus because their parents snuck them in here or gave birth to them just over the border. This is truly pathetic and only gives fuel to the illegal immigrant issue. If nothing else they should be deported along with their illegal parents.
***
Highly gifted at milking the system…
***
Lost in all the reactionary hysteria is the simple fact that an overhaul of the HGT system is long overdue. And I say that as a parent whose kid benefited from the top-flight teachers and small class sizes that have always been an integral part of the program. My understanding has always been that highly gifted was supposed to apply to kids who tested at the 99th percentile. But DPS consistently bent this rule, in my experience. Ive known kids who truly are highly gifted, to the extent that they couldnt function well in a regular classroom. These are kids who are out there, who often seem inwardly focused, single-minded, and socially awkward. They need a program that in reality is a form of special education. What DPS has done over the years (and I can only speak with authority about the 1990s, when my daughter was in the program), is to relax the rules so that kids who test exceptionally well get labeled highly gifted. This is a great strategy for keeping affluent families in DPS, but its not highly gifted education. Theres conflicting research about whether cognitive ability tests, IQ tests and the like are culturally biased. But I have no doubt they are biased in favor of kids who come from privileged backgrounds. Unless youre a crank who believes that poor people are poor because theyre stupid, you have to acknowledge that kids who come from enriched homes, where a parent is almost always present, where theres ample intellectual and sensory stimulation, are going to be more prepared to succeed in school and on tests, even those that purport to cut through the biases and drill down to cognitive ability. So if DPS is tacitly acknowledging that the HGT identification system has been inherently biased for years, and is now moving to eliminate that bias, I say bravo. Its about time. And why are those cranky commenters so angry? I bet theyre worried that some low-income kid, given equal educational opportunity, is going to run intellectual circles around their children, highly gifted or not. Perish the thought. Ive deliberately left the race angle out of this post, but Ive no doubt thats what really chaps these commenters hides. But Ill leave that hot-button topic for another day.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
This issue has come up before in DPS. Here’s an article I wrote about it in 2001 when I was still a reporter at the Rocky.
ANGLO KIDS FAR MORE LIKELY TO BE DUBBED `GIFTED’ IN DPS
Date: Monday, November 5, 2001
Section: Local
Page: 22A
Source: By Holly Yettick
News Staff Writer
Memo: EDUCATION
Edition: Final
For Anglo students, Denver Public Schools can be a little like Lake Woebegone, the fictional little Minnesota town of radio variety show fame where all the children are above average.
A whopping 40 percent of Anglo middle-schoolers, a third of high-schoolers and nearly a fifth of elementary children were identified as “gifted and talented” in 1999-2000, the most recent year for which data are available.
By contrast, Hispanic students, who comprise more than half of the district’s enrollment, were identified as “gifted and talented” at rates ranging from 5 percent at the elementary level to 14 percent in middle and high school.
Gifted and talented director Barb Neyrinck says it’s not just whites: Children of all races are probably more likely identified as gifted and talented here than in other districts. By high school, 20 percent of DPS students have been identified as “gifted and talented” - a rate Neyrinck says is roughly double national norms.
Neyrinck chalks that up to a practice, ended about four years ago, of including children with superior leadership and athletic skills among the ranks of the gifted and talented.
However, DPS’ overall percentage of gifted and talented kids of all races rose both before and after the practice ended.
The increases have been especially steep for Anglo students. The percentage of Anglo students identified as gifted and talented has increased between 5 percent and 6 percent since 1995, depending on the grade level.
Increases during that time were less than 2.5 percent at every grade level for Hispanics and less than 4 percent for blacks.
Neyrinck noted that the district’s more selective “highly gifted and talented” category remains small, with only 1 percent to 2 percent of students earning the classification.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
you have to acknowledge that kids who come from enriched homes, where a parent is almost always present, where theres ample intellectual and sensory stimulation, are going to be more prepared to succeed in school and on tests, even those that purport to cut through the biases and drill down to cognitive ability.
Unfortunately, the evidence doesn’t support this assertion. The adopted twins studies show that IQ can be raised slightly in early childhood but that those increases wash out by adolescence and fall back to the “racial” mean.
With respect to IQ testing bias, any kind of non-functional bias against minorities in test design has been radioactive for decades, so all the questions that were unfair to minorities were removed long ago. That claim doesn’t hold up anymore.
That said, I agree that the DPS program was pulling from a less elite cohort (by my estimate 89th percentile and above). And if DPS wanted to increase minority presence (from 25% to 33%) this could have been easily accomplished by slightly lowering the cutoff by about 2% for minorities. They didn’t have to, in effect, throw out the standards. Lots of the minority students got in the program by merit.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
The above comment comes from the proprietor of the formidable D-ed Reckoning blog. Read his post about the DPS HGT program at this link:
http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2008/03/denver-goosing-gifted-classes.html
Whether you agree with him or not, Mr. DeRosa knows his stuff.
March 4th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Good post. “Gifted” programs seem to be a way for motivated parents to get their kids in a school that draws other motivated parents. In that sense, it’s no different than any magnet program or popular charter school.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Engaging and somewhat depressing posts. All this G/T talk got me thinking about the science behind this stuff and it reminded me of Stephen J. Goulds The Mismeasure of Man, see a review here http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/home/gould-mismeasure.html . Some of you may recall the science of craniometry, the size and shape of skulls that Gould so thoughtfully ridicules in the book.
I also thought of what it means for adults. MENSA came to mind. Its the group where membership means being above the 98th percentile. When I googled MENSA, I found an article (http://www.pugbus.net/artman/publish/112505_simpsonsplit.shtml) on one of their supposed recruitment campaigns and almost fell out of my chair. It involves Jessica Simpson photos in skimpy shorts lounging next to some volume of Kierkegaard. Assuming this is true, I wonder if the ad folks for MENSA are also members of MENSA.
The science behind this stuff seems questionable at best.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
You might want to take a look at Arthur Jensen’s rebuttal to Gould, THE DEBUNKING OF SCIENTIFIC FOSSILS AND STRAW PERSONS, before jumping to conclusions.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Do you really think there is one measure for human intelligence that is determined from a simple paper and pencil test?
March 5th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
fwiw, before he died, Gould responded to Jensen’s criticisms (in an updated version of “Mismeasurement”). But more to the point, why should we give the time of day to these people who argue that whites are, on average, smarter — or higher in “IQ” — than blacks? It’s disgusting, meaningless, sophistry that’s useful only to those who want to argue, for instance, that it’s okay to have elite programs disproportionately neglect students of color. Consider some of the different levels at which this is garbage:
(1) As Van points out, human intelligence (and, more broadly, the sorts of talents that can be nurtured by an enriched program) is so much more than can be tested by even the best IQ test.
(2) Even gifted programs that consider many different criteria are still granting these enriched opportunities to kids whose “gifts” are derived from their genome and their environment since birth — a combination that favors families and students who are already advantaged.
(3) Choosing to believe in a statistically significant link between race and “intelligence” entails favoring a distinct minority of researchers over a very reputably majority. Why would one do that?
Here’s a recent debunking of the Jensen argument by the Richard Nisbett, a psychologist at the Univ of Michigan of impeccable credentials: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Nisbett-commentary-on-30years.pdf
Here’s the conclusion:
“In short, Rushton and Jensen (2005) ride roughshod over the evidence
concerning the question of whether the BlackWhite IQ gap has a hereditary basis. The most directly relevant research concerns degree of European ancestry in the Black population. There is not a shred of evidence in this literature, which draws on studies having a total of five very different designs, that the gap has a genetic basis. Adoption studies give scarcely more support to the heritability position. Finally, Black and White IQ scores have converged in recent decades, and in addition, we know that intervention programs can produce substantial and lasting effects on Black IQ. The most obvious policy relevance of this set of
findings is that at-risk childrenthose born to impoverished women, especially those likely to be unable to provide a stimulating environment, and in particular children who have low birth weight or other factors predisposing to low IQ should be exposed to the most extensive intervention programs that it is practical to provide. This group happens to include a disproportionate percentage of Black infants, but race need not, and perhaps should not, be made a criterion for inclusion.”
To be clear, while I have read some of these back-and-forths, I don’t know the data or analyses as well as Gould or Nisbett or Jensen. I suspect the same is true if MDeRosa and everyone else reading this blog. I do find the arguments and weight of research to strongly favor the non-racists here, and maybe that’s in part because I’m inclined to see the world that way. So I see little reason to buy into the Jensen arguments and lots of reasons to dismiss them.
In contrast, I suspect that the primary motivation (other than pure racism) for continuing to put one’s faith in the Jensen research is a desire to NOT invest in the programs Nisbett points us to.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:39 am
There are many tests related to humnan cognitive ability, i.e., the kind of human intelligence we are interested in for gifted classes. The tests are highly correlated.
The reason why IQ is an important concept is because we have a much more difficult time adequately educating children with lower IQs, regardless of race. Failing to account for IQ differences generally results in lower IQ children failing to become educated, not exactly a desirable outcome, your smugness notwithstanding.
FYI, playing the race card is not an adequate substitute for reasoned debate. I’d also recommend examing your arguments for logical fallacies before posting since they tend to cut against whatever position you’re trying to advocate. My 2.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Unless I misunderstood, you were/are arguing that racially disproportionate gifted enrollment is sorta okay, since whites are more intelligent anyway. How might you suggest responding to that racist argument without “playing the race card”?
March 6th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
What I’m arguing is that racially disproportionate gifted enrollment does not imply racial discrimination. That’s because, regardless of the underlying causality, today there exists an IQ gap between the “races” just like there is an uneven distribution of many human characteristics.
I have not argued that a person’s race causes this unequal distribution in cognitive ability. The correlation does not imply the racist causation you advocate. There is nothing inherently inferior about any race. Plenty of blacks and Hispanics are smarter than whites. And plenty of blacks and Hispanics qualify for the gifted programs using unbiased IQ tests. Just not as many as whites (and would bet northeast asians are even more disportionately represented), which seems to be upsetting you.
Are you equally concerned that there is also an unequal distribution of basketball and football players in the various races? Does it offend your notion of justice that some races are taller than other races? Aren’t these shorter races also inherently inferior in some way? Are you concerned that certain “races” dominate certain olympic sporting events? Are you upset that some races can run faster than other races and are disproportionately represented on track teams? Shouldn’t we assure than the races are proportionately represented on these track teams? Certainly speed cannot be measured by a single clock speed on a single event. Certainly these slower kids have differeent gifts we can nourish and would be enriched by their inclusion on the track team. Cearly these are advantages dervied from the genome and the environment since birth. Aren’t you concerned by the disadvantage and humiliation these slow kids must endure daily at the foot of the master fast race?
The fact that you disagree with my argument does not make it a racist argument. If you were confident in the strength of your underlying argument you wouldn’t resort to name calling in order to convince people of the merits in your argument.
March 6th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I beg your forgiveness, Mr. DeRosa. I read your posts and they so closely resemble racial supremacy arguments used by others in the past that I became confused, thinking that you also intended to make such arguments. I hope you understand this was an honest mistake on my part.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Your post brings up some good points, Alan. It’s true that the HGT program could use some improvements — solid professional development programming and requiring teachers to have credentials for working with this unique population would be a good start. Still, for my own socially-awkward, special-needs child, just being with other kids like him for the elementary school years was a godsend. As a bonus, my son was fortunate to learn from two talented teaching professionals who made a big difference in his life.
GT programs have long drawn derision and scorn from all corners. It’s hard to get away from the elitism charges. Still, I was particularly taken aback by the dark tone of the comments Meyer’s article elicited. There’s something about posting anonymously online (or even under the veil of a blogger name, it must be said) that brings out the worst in some people. I’ve seen postings by people who begrudge giving children of color breakfast or lunch through tax supported programs.
It’s hard to believe that folks in our society would prefer to see a child go hungry in order to save a few cents on their tax bill, and it’s hard to look at the bigotry that comes out from the woodwork in response to articles like Meyer’s. Still, there it is. It’s useful to acknowledge it. Painful, too.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Wow!
A lot of minefields here, and a lot of people missing the point.
In my experience (daughter, dutifully tested and labeled by DPS as HGT), DPS’ HGT classrooms aren’t. My daughter, who blew the doors off her Raven’s, is not HGT, nor are the majority of her classmates– which range from high achievers to one or two truly HGT kids.
The HGTs are simply a proxy for rigorous classrooms, with accelerated instruction in what is pretty much standard fare DPS curriculum. It is not even paying lip service to kind of goofy GT programs (which were great for many) I was subjected to Jeffco 25 years ago as the district piloted GT programming.
Herein lies the issue– it show how well DPS can do with high expectations and involved parents– it also shows DPS duplicity in labeling, which permeates its bureaucracy.
December 11th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
The best information on the numerous fallacies used against IQ testing I’ve seen by Professor Linda Gottfredson.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2008logical-fallacies.pdf
Sadly, The Mismeasure of Man is one of Gould’s worst books. It’s filled with straw-man arguments, ignores the existing evidence, and picks & chooses who he will argue against. For example, Gould omits any mention of the eugenicists of the left, such as Margaret Sanger.
I would recommend Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate instead.
While the nonscientific reviews of The Mismeasure of Man were almost uniformly laudatory, the reviews in the scientific journals were almost all highly critical (Davis, Bernard D. (1983). Neo-Lysenkoism, IQ, and the press. The Public Interest, 74, 41-59).
- Gould also makes some misleading comments about the early performance of Jewish migrants on psychometric tests. Goddard never found that Jews as a group did poorly, and there is no evidence the tests were used in passing the 1924 Immigration Act (see, Franz Samelson (1975, 1982), Snyderman & Herrnstein 1983).
- Gould overlooks identical twin studies.
- Gould’s factor analysis is incorrect (also see John Carroll’s review Intelligence 21, 121-134 (1995), (also, Jensen Contemporary Education Review Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.) David J. Bartholomew, from London School of Economics, who has writtena textbook on factor analysis, also explains in “Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies” where Gould goes wrong in this area.
-Gould states that Morton “doctored” his collection of results on cranial size, but J. S. Michael (1988) remeasured a random sample of the Morton collection he found that very few errors had been made, and that these were not in the direction that Gould had asserted.
- The Army actually still uses IQ tests, and more generally, the tests have been shown to strongly predict academic performance.
- Gould largely attacks old tests. Jensen responded to a large amount of Gould’s criticism in Contemporary Education Review
Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.) I don’t think Gould ever replied.
-He attacks Cyril Burt for fabricating his twin studies, but books since Gould’s first edition came out have vindicated Burt (Joynson (1988) and the other by Ronald Fletcher (1991). Further, twin studies since show average heritability from these studies of 75%, almost the same as Burts supposedly ‘faked’ heritability of 77%.