Writer’s Block Demolition Site

A recent news release issued by Vanderbilt University suggests that it is possible to predict the career path of an individual as early as the age of 13. Science Daily did a report on this finding, and although it doesn’t directly relate to ability-based tracking in the educational world, there is a very strong link. Also, these findings can have very strong repercussions when dealing with high school tracking (and I will say “high school,” because we’re looking at age 13 here).

David Lubinski, who is a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt, explains that:

“differences in creative potential among highly gifted youth can be identified at age 13, offering opportunities for educators and policymakers to develop programs to cultivate these individuals based on their unique strengths and abilities.”

He is referring specifically to an SAT administered to gifted 13-year-olds which predicted accurately many of the children’s future career choices. To me, the concept of directing an adolescent’s career path based on a test administered so early in his life is very dangerous. It leads straight into the concept of tracking. When I give it a second thought, though, I can see some positive points. I can definitely see that knowing that a child is gifted in certain areas can help educators to understand how to teach him. Teachers would know to challenge certain students even more in their strong areas, giving those students the opportunity to excel. Plus, since this research shows that students who excelled in certain areas eventually found careers in those areas, we can assume that those subjects were enjoyable to those gifted in those areas. Surely if we challenged gifted students in their gifted subject area we’d make education more enjoyable to them.

But there is a catch: the article goes on with a litany of the accomplishments of these gifted students:

“They earned a total of 817 patents and published 93 books. Of the 18 participants who later earned tenure-track positions in math/science fields at top-50 U.S. universities, their average age 13 SAT-M score was 697, and the lowest score among them was 580, a score greater than over 60 percent of all students who take the SAT.”

This is wonderful for those individuals, but what about 13-year-olds who DON’T score well on this early SAT? It strikes me that if schools use this test to set gifted students on the right track, they may just as easily use this test to put lower scoring students in a remedial track, and the whole problems that come with tracking follow. This test supposedly works for students heavily gifted in one area, but it would be so much more beneficial if it could also find the strong points of less gifted children. Then their teachers, too, could benefit from knowing where these children excel.

This study does offer some helpful information, but unless used wisely, it could do far more harm than good. I think that if these tests could find the strong points of all 13-year-olds across the board, then it would be worth a whole lot more.

Science Daily, September 8, 2007

“Future Career Path of Gifted Youth Can Be Predicted By Age 13 By SAT”

Full article here