Some junior high school students score much higher on these assessments than their high school counterparts. In fact, some may score high enough to meet the entrance requirements for M.I.T. or Stanford when they are only 12. For gifted students, achieving an A is not the goal. The real purpose of education is to learn new information. Students who achieve A s based on what they have already learned are gaining daily practice in underachievement.
All students have the right to struggle.
Struggling is essential to growth. It means that the student is stretching to attain new power in learning. And gifted students actually enjoy struggling to master new material if they haven t been so pruned into grade-getters that they are afraid of a challenge. Girls, in particular, are at risk for shunning challenges in favor of performing perfectly what they already know. Engage the students in academic planning.