Post-High School Education Outcomes for Level One Gifted (Moderately Gifted)
Level One people are in the moderately to gifted range of advanced learners. How much does previous background and "good fit" affect their options and choices by the time they finish high school?
Where any individual fits in his or her setting or environment depends, to a significant extent, on who else is there. That’s called the relativity of intelligence, of high giftedness. Having — or not having — access to true peers with whom they can share their ideas and easily understand each other can be a detriment to their progress. It can lead to other long-term issues, as well, so the goal is to help readers see what some of these less-than-ideal outcomes are for the different Levels of Gifted.
We start with Level One: The Conventionally Gifted
People in the Level One range are also in the what I call the Conventionally Gifted range. I chose the term “conventionally gifted” to describe the first three Levels because most teachers and most students have had such gifted students in their classes. These are the people others think of as smart, maybe gifted. Within the Conventionally range are Levels One, Two and Three.
Post-High School Education and “Good Fit”
The idea is that a “good fit” extends past the regular school years in our lives. With the background on what a good post-high school fit looks like, we can continue to explore what really happens for any cross-section of gifted people — not just the ones in this study — and some typical, real, and recurring reasons behind the school and educational choices different people of similar abilities make.
And please remember, someone, including you, does not need to have been identified as gifted or told by some authority figure that they are gifted. When you read my material, you will figure yourself out as far as that goes.
One purpose of this post is to demonstrate that it is the social-emotional — the sense of well-being — plus the reveling-or-not in the challenge and wonder of engaging, comprehensive learning and work that give our lives meaning.
How Smart or Advanced Are People in Each Level of Gifted?
People within each Level of Gifted are capable of learning more than the typical, or average, learner during the K-12 school years when the conditions are good for them. How much more?
How rapidly could the child progress through the academics of grades K-6 lessons and objectives?
Level One (moderately gifted) ~ 4 years (or about 2/3 of the standard time)
Level Two (highly gifted) ~ about 3 years (or about ½ the standard time)
Level Three (exceptionally gifted) ~ 2 years (or about 1/3 the standard time)
Level 4 (exceptionally to profoundly gifted) ~ 1–2 years or less (or about 1/6 the standard time) particularly in their strength areas
Level Five (profoundly gifted) ~ less than 1 year
For the Level One student, what stands out most is that parents and teachers alike expect good grades and cooperation and yet the student realizes the pace is too slow … almost always. Right now, we will look just at what they did as they left high school and started their careers.
How can years of sitting through inappropriate schooling affect people long-term?
“Being ahead” is generally about the gifted child’s ability to understand and maintain the learning before they officially start any formal, and sometimes even before informal, schooling. When the parents of gifted children describe their children as being like sponges who simply absorb everything, this is why their children are ahead when the regular school years start. They start learning and using what they learned much younger than typical children, and that means they’ve already experienced enough repetitions to master many topics. How much more than typical depends on their Level and profile of intelligence, but it also has something to do with their access to toys and books and other people and walks around the neighborhood and trips to the park. In order to “show their stuff” they usually need a certain lack of any overwhelming trauma in their lives.
The K-12 path (kindergarten through grade 12 school years) is strongly related — and usually impacts — the post-high school education and career choice options and outcomes for most study participants. I’ve already posted about the K-12 years themselves. All of those 5 pieces (blog posts) start with the same title: Are Schools Set Up for Gifted Children?
To assure the anonymity of participants, rather than identify the post-high school institution by name, I created tables that use a number to indicate how competitive it is as far as the percentage of applicants who apply compared to those who are accepted. 1 means most competitive/ elite and 5 means it’s something other than regular college or university.
US News and College Simply ratings are used to establish the selectivity factor and the standardized ACT/SAT score ranges. The main point to this is to give us a metric for whether each study participant found a way to attend an institution of post-secondary learning that would likely have true peers and appropriate coursework depth and pacing for their intellectual ability level. And as readers may have noticed, doing away with such standardized testing didn’t help the elite institutions select students who had the ability to handle their curriculum and intellectual expectations.[i] I have known for a long time that grades are a poor predictor of college or life success.[ii]
It is likely a good fit when the student’s ACT/SAT score is not too high above or below that of the range posted by the institution as representing the average student who matriculates there.
For example, if someone in Level Three attends an Elite University[iii] (and many did), anyone from Level Three could have theoretically done well — both in performance and in their social and emotional connections — in such an institution. But not all of the Level Three study subjects had the option to attend an elite school and the different reasons are laid out here.
In this study group, there is no one who attended a school that was above their ability to do well.
Many, however, did get their post-high school training and education in places and institutions — not the traditional college path — that were more of the same poor fit they experienced during their earlier school years. As they reached adulthood, many of the study subjects found themselves again involved in institutions or on paths that were not a good fit for them emotionally, socially, academically, or competitively.
In this series of post-secondary results and fit, I add slightly expanded tables that include summary results of what each young person experienced (Unsatisfactory, Acceptable, Satisfactory, and Excellent) during their kindergarten through high school years. I’ve added categories to the Levels’ tables connected to their post-secondary environments and choices. The intention is to illustrate that a poor school fit can have repercussions well beyond one’s grade school years because it continues to affect the self-concept, goals, ability to compete or keep up, and a sense of belonging — fitting in — of the individuals.
As you read through the tables in each post about post-secondary life and training and the Levels of Gifted study subjects, consider that each table represents a Level of Giftedness that indicates, within it, a similar range of abilities among the study participants. Readers will see that an earlier “good fit” generally leads to later good fits and options, options that support the development of their talents, careers, social, and emotional needs. Conversely, it becomes clear that lack of an early “good fit” can have negative repercussions far into the future of people who are every bit as capable as those gifted students whose needs were met. Although you may have only looked at the K-12th grade education environment fit so far, readers can see here that subsequent training options and choices are related to the book subjects’ earlier experiences.
Level One Post-High School Fit Summary
Why This Matters
We start with some general information about Level One students. For instance, if they are in public or private schools which draw from a working class, rural, or “unsettled” population that experiences lots of moving or poverty, a Type I school, there are likely to be one to three Level One students in each classroom. Double the number estimate for a Type II school setting. If a district has a high socioeconomic population or if there are schools in a district where most of the parents are highly educated professionals, Level One children are high average learners and constitute at least a third of the students in their schools. In such settings Level One students are rarely included in the gifted programs because their assessed IQ scores are slightly below the school’s gifted acceptance or cut-off score. However, the American professional class is predominantly from a Level One ability range.
For the four people in Level One, there is a significant range of educational outcomes.
All four people here in this study had Unsatisfactory learning and social “fit” in their kindergarten through Grade 3 (K-3rd in the Chapter 3 tables) school years. Notice that the first four years of typical schooling have likely set many gifted learners on a path of frustration and underachievement. Most gifted identification and programming — if there is any — begins during third grade.
The achievement range within a typical middle school mixed ability seventh-grade class ranges from approximately third-grade equivalency to post-graduate college level (Lohman, D., 1999). Middle schools are different from elementary schools primarily because the students move from class to class for their different subjects instead of being taught by the same teacher all or most of the day. Because of this class and schedule structure, middle school teachers see many more students in one day than elementary teachers. This means it takes longer for the teacher to know the students well enough to respond effectively to their individual or unique learning profiles until further into the school year. And middle schools, like elementary schools, almost always group students primarily by age rather than ability profile. Since the achievement gap between the slowest and fastest learners gets larger every year, the gap between the classroom instructional level and the gifted child’s achievement and ability level is large by the time a child reaches middle school. It also depends on how gifted the child is compared to classmates. And just to complicate matters a bit more, at every age and grade level, each school year’s population will differ. This means the teacher may have an entirely different group of students with different personalities and needs the next year, so what worked for one year’s students won’t work for the next year’s.
Since the late 1970s, these school years have continued a practice of whole-class instruction with little to no ability grouping. The curriculum and pacing are designed for the abilities of the average child in the classroom. For the four children in this study who are in Types I and II schools, though, the pace and depth of coursework are below their abilities and interests because it is designed for a lower range of classroom abilities than that of the Level One student. It also means there are too few like-minded classmates with whom to effectively compete, joke around, and befriend.
The Level One Subjects’ Post-Secondary Choices
Kirk
Kirk Peterson described himself as mostly on his own to cover his high school material at home and online. Here is how Kirk described his situation as a homeschooler:
I was mostly homeschooled. My mother let us go at our own pace (it was different for each of us) and only paid attention to our finishing what we should finish our work on time. There wasn’t much instructional interaction. We basically did public school at home, and my mother used a state-run, tuition free online program. I would wait until the last minute to do everything. My parents’ encouragement to me to get it done was that I could only be in honors math if I did the homework. Of course, that worked in my favor, too, because instead of taking the bait, I chose to drop down a level in the math courses to avoid homework at all.
Kirk’s pre-college years did not present him with enough challenge or structure to require study or organizational skills. Although he did fine in both his first two post-secondary schools, he found real peers in the professors for whom he worked on projects, and intellectual challenge After a one-year break from school before job-hunting, Kirk, in his mid-twenties, found a software engineering position. He received a major promotion and pay increase recently. His post-secondary tuition and expenses were paid for by family money, and it included a trust fund from grandparents for just that purpose.
Henry
Henry’s intellectual profile was stronger in the verbal domains than in the math and qualitative reasoning domains, so he was more comfortable in writing and discussion groups than in advanced math classes. His intellectual profile is stronger in the verbal domains than in the math and qualitative reasoning domains, so he was more comfortable in writing and discussion groups than in advanced math classes. Henry, who went into military service after high school, said this:
I always enjoyed the classes in the gifted student program where we would get together in a small group outside of normal class and learn about interesting things, and think about larger, more complicated topics and issues stimulating intellectual conversation. It was the other classes — like accelerated math courses, for example — that I never liked. But, by association, I was always placed in in those advanced math classes due to my involvement with other accelerated programs. In retrospect, I feel that I had a hard time liking these classes because they held me to a standard that I was then too lazy to work for. Things had always been easy for me to learn up until I hit middle school math, at which point I realized that I would have to actually work for good grades.
Henry applied and went to a Tier 2 post-secondary institution. It was what his parents expected of him, but he dropped out due to a complete lack of interest before finishing his freshman year. He knew his interests lay in “hands on” activities and learning, so he went into the military where he earned an associate degree. Henry is the least satisfied of the four people in this Level, but he has found his own intrinsic motivation and now is halfway through a four-year program in manufacturing engineering at a Tier 3 institution. He was briefly married, lives in an apartment near school, and is in his mid-twenties. His college costs are covered by the GI Bill. He continues his service with the Air National Guard and works at a job that covers his basic living costs.
Albena and Ronald
Both Albena and Ronald got to experience an Excellent fit for themselves. Interviewed while still in their twenties, they both reported that their school was a good fit for them. They both completed a four-year degree in four years. Albena’s academic focus was geological engineering and global developmental partnerships. Recently married and in her mid-twenties, she is a civil engineer and environmental specialist at a worldwide company. About her wedding, she stated:
We recently bought a condo, which we could not have done without help from [my husband’s] family. His grandma had saved money to help us with the down payment, which we could still only do 3.5% down. Our wedding was very cheap as weddings go. Our families made all the food/dessert and it was at a family friend’s house.
When asked how her university expenses were paid, she said:
I had a mix of scholarships, governmental and private loans. My parents took out a parent loan for me (and my sister) to cover up to a certain amount for us both. My dad also co-signed on all my private student loans. I still have a lot of debt; I graduated with over $100k in student loans. While in school, I lived at a women’s ministry house, which was a lot cheaper than on campus. I was able to take classes over the summer because I could take out student loans and live in the women’s house more cheaply. As I was going into engineering and had a job right out of college, it is much more manageable than it otherwise would be. My husband is also in an engineering field, and while he has some debt from school, it was less than half of mine. When asked to describe their payoff plan, Albena replied: Right now, all of our loans are set to be repaid in a max of 15 years (mortgage is longer). Our plan is to start paying them off more rapidly now that we have some savings built up, but I have not calculated how long it will take us to pay them all off yet. About 35% of our monthly income is going toward student loans and about 23% to the mortgage.
Ronald’s Type I high school had some advanced courses, and he chose to take several, so this was an improvement over the first nine years of his schooling. Generally, when there are advanced courses, the students must first prove that they can succeed in them. This means that classmates are likely to be bright enough to do so, as well. These classes were likely the first experiences that Ronald had of being in a group comprised of mostly bright students as classmates, and most of them were probably as bright as he. So it was a good fit for him by then.
He majored in broadcast journalism. In his first post-college job, he said this:
I’m not entirely happy at my job and not making the money I want. I’m looking at maybe account management.
In his late twenties, he was promoted to an executive producer and project manager position at the same growing, international company where he was previously unsatisfied. Shortly thereafter, he was laid off.
My job (and most of my department) was … laid off, which kind of sucked but that’s the way startups with no established revenue stream work. I was on unemployment for a while trying to figure out what to do with my life, and then landed a seasonal job through my college internship boss with the in-house production department for athletics. I was hired on to shoot/edit/produce promo content for the men’s hockey team, so I spent most weekends last winter either working the games at the arena or traveling with the team to produce on the road/behind the scenes content, mainly for social media. Shortly after I committed to working there, I was hired on full-time as the video producer at a full-service real estate centered photo, video, and imaging company.
He, his longtime girlfriend, and their dog moved in together three years ago. When describing how he managed to get through a Tier 2 university without any continuing loans he said,
I don’t have any school loans now. I got some minor scholarships — I applied for a couple and I got them. Got one through the marching band, and I was in the marching band in college all four years. My grandparents and some other relatives, my uncle, also contributed. They all wanted me to be able to do marching band, etc., and I didn’t take it for granted and still worked as a valet through school.
Takeaways From the Level One Post-Secondary Fit
Early background, including one’s educational options and choices, continues to affect the social, emotional, educational and career attainment throughout one’s life. It affects confidence and self-esteem, too. It affects resilience. I’ll explain more — and go into more depth — in later posts.
The details of this part of the longitudinal study can be found in Ruf, D. (2023). The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us, 2023.
[i] See this search result for more information about using the SAT and ACT: https://www.google.com/search?q=the+SAt+and+ACT+are+being+reinstated&oq=the+SAt+and+ACT+are+being+reinstated&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigAdIBCTE4NTMzajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
[ii] One source that may interest readers: Dr. Fred Zhang of PrepScholar explains the relationship to IQ of results on ACT and SAT tests https:// blog.prepscholar.com/act-vs-sat-in-iq-intelligence.
[iii] An elite university is The term “Elite” refers to one category of the ratio of how many students are accepted compared to how many people applied to an institution. This is also commonly referred to as the “competitive” factor — how “competitive” it is to gain entrance.
[iv] Ruf, D. (2023). Chapters 4 and 5. See: https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-Children-Grown-Up/dp/B0C9SHFRLH or https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-5-levels-of-gifted-children-grown-up-phd-deborah-l-ruf/1143719859?ean=9798988323709