Gifted Exchange

Greetings! I know it has been a long time since I've posted here, but there's some great news that I wanted to share with the Gifted Exchange audience. The Davidson Institute -- which is the spon...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-new-online-high-school-for-gifted-kids.html

I have been reading (and enjoying) Anders Ericsson’s new book, Peak. Ericsson’s career has focused on researching how one achieves world class performance in competitive fields such as music ...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2016/04/it-isnt-eitheror.html

My oldest child is now in 3rd grade, which in our state means it's time for the big No Child Left Behind-inspired assessments. There have been emails going around about the process of opting out,...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2016/03/standardized-testing-in-or-out.html

One of the arguments against self-contained gifted classes is that children who don't receive this label will feel inferior. While that would certainly be a sad outcome, an experiment in Baltimor...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2016/02/this-doesnt-make-differences-less.html

I hope everyone had a great New Year! I know from previous surveys that a high proportion (perhaps 50 percent) of families of profoundly gifted students wind up homeschooling at some point during...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2016/01/how-to-work-and-homeschool-too.html

California has long had issues with matching up its public K-12 school system with its system of public universities. When I was out there a few years ago doing some reporting, I learned that a n...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/12/acceleration-math-and-college-standards.html

I took AP Calculus (AB) my sophomore year in high school, and then a semester of the BC version my junior year. While this was certainly considered "advanced," it's not particularly rare to take ...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/12/more-kids-take-calculus-in-high-school.html

In the 10th anniversary post, I wrote that we'd be re-visiting some of the topics that sparked the most discussion over the years. One of those questions was how to talk about your gifted child. ...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-talk-about-your-gifted-kid.html

I had a conversation with a father recently whose highly gifted son had needed more challenge. The school recommended accelerating him a grade. The family didn't want to do that, and wound up put...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/11/when-to-skip-grade-when-not-to-plus.html

Homework is a source of friction in many families, and we are not immune to this. Let’s just say that learning to be organized about the homework’s location and completion is a skill that tak...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/10/but-its-optional.html

As promised in my 10th anniversary post, I'd like to re-raise some of the issues from the most-discussed posts of the past. A particularly thorny issue for many parents is what to tell their kids...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/10/what-should-you-tell-your-kid.html

Believe it or not, this blog turns 10 years old this week (on the 23rd, exactly). If it were a kid, it would be a 4th grader -- or perhaps an accelerated 5th or 6th grader. My own interest in gif...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/09/gifted-exchange-turns-10.html

Years ago, I had a gig with Scientific American writing a weekly column for the website called "Where are they now?" This recurring feature looked at past finalists in the Westinghouse Science Ta...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/09/intel-and-intel-science-talent-search.html

My 5-year-old starts "real" kindergarten later this week. Long-time blog readers know that our district is perfectly fine with letting you hold back your child for a year, but his late September ...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-skill-of-performance.html

This past week the Davidson Institute for Talent Development (which sponsors this blog) announced the winners of its flagship Davidson Fellows awards. Every year, DITD awards $10,000, $25,000, an...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/08/congrats-to-2015-davidson-fellows.html

There are lots of trendy management theories out there (believe me -- I get sent a lot of review copies of the books!) But one that seems to get major attention, to the point of trickling down to...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/08/collaboration-agony-and-ecstasy.html

Every year, various nations gather to compete in the International Math Olympiad. This summer, the US team won for the first time in 21 years. It was certainly cause for celebration, though the h...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-math-olympiad-and-math-education.html

The Davidson Institute sends me a list of headlines related to gifted education each week. I’ve been keeping this blog for almost 10 years, so I see a lot of headlines. And over the years, I’...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/07/whos-in-and-whos-out.html

My friend Katherine Reynolds Lewis has a lengthy story in Mother Jones magazine this month called "What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?" Over the past two years, she vis...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/07/new-methods-of-school-discipline-and.html

Plenty of districts have pared back gifted programs in recent years. So I'm always interested to read about districts that are doing the opposite. A recent Washington Post article outlined plans ...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/06/will-gifted-program-keep-families-in-or.html

From a parental perspective, summer vacation is a mixed thing. If school has been your primary childcare during the year, suddenly you need a new situation. For some kids, the summer learning sli...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/06/summer-learning.html

The New York Times ran a “Room for Debate” package about child prodigies this week. The question: is it a blessing or a curse? I enjoyed reading Jordan Ellenberg’s take on this. A math prod...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/05/prodigies-become-performers-when-work.html

One common criticism of gifted programs is the over- or under-representation of certain groups. Smart programs try to screen everyone rather than relying on parent or teacher nominations (which m...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/05/la-and-exact-proportionality.html

When advocates for gifted kids bring up the idea of "whole grade acceleration" -- better known as skipping a grade -- some chunk of people get very concerned. They mention knowing "one child" who...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/04/more-evidence-that-skipping-grades-is-ok.html

Many elite colleges send notice of acceptances right around April 1st. Back when I was applying to college, this was a postal mail phenomenon. Joy came in fat envelopes; tragedy in thin. Now, muc...

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-student-affluence-test.html