[jcommin]

M.D.,

I read this article too. I started going thru the list and I saw the no. 1 school in IL. This school is for the truly gifted. It is a special selective enrollment school. My thinking was: "what is the purpose of this article?" Was is to make average people feel bad, marvel at truly gifted kids, make me feel jealous and /or encourage the local schools to bring their game up. I don't get it.

Mu oldest son, who is now 27, had behavioral issues. He was put into a therapeutic school from the 7th grade until his junior year in HS. He was main streamed into the public HS, graduated and I cried during the commencement. I did not cry because of happiness, I cried from relief that he finished HS. At that time, I didn't know what he would do. He tried college but it wasn't for him. He is very entrepreneurial and took advantage of his gift. Today he runs a 8 million company. I am very proud of him. I actually do some business with him.

I am so tired of gifted programs and gifted kids when in fact the majority are average and more effort needs to be placed with kids that have needs. I felt like a pariah during the time my son was in a therapeutic school because all I heard in my community was how special everyone was. I attended a freshman HS orientation - a question was asked: " how many gifted kids are in the school?" The answer:" about 8%". I said to myself: they all must be in my neighborhood! To put thing in perspective, my son graduated from Glenbrook North located in Northbrook, IL. Northbrook is an upper income burb on the north shore. There were 648 in my son's graduating class and 52 of them were National Honor society members, exactly 8%.

This is one of the biggest cons I bought into as a parent.


I interview allot of potential engineering hires. All these kids have great GPAs. All of that tells me is that they study, do homework and are good test takers. I always ask: " Have your ever failed?. How did you recover from failure? What did you learn from it? How well do you work with others?" Stuff like this gets me a better picture of who they are. They other thing I learned: Passion beats skill all day! Show me someone who has the fire inside, they will get everything else.

You sound like a great parent!