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the meds do NOT improve IQ. They make it easier to concentrate. If non ADHD kids do better on tests with the meds, thats a sign the tests are focused on speed, and not on testing actual knowledge and ability. Maybe you should question the test design.
Yes, lots of ADHD kids are in GT programs. Thats because lots of high IQ people have ADHD.
EXACTLY!
As the mother of a daughter that is now in the high school IB program and has been in a G/T program since kindergarten. There were a LOT of kids she went to school with that were G/T and ADHD. There are a lot more kids that are ADHD that are NOT G/T. My daughter does not have ADHD or any form or variation of. It does not bother me one bit that she has classmates and has had classmates that were ADHD in school with her in the G/T program. I'm all for it.
I'm another parent with an ADHD/GT son who used meds his 9th grade year. He has always been an excellent test taker while his daily work was generally incomplete much to most of his teacher's frustration when he was unmedicated. He also has some sensory processing issues which amplify/multiply all of his senses and an extremely high processing speed which allows him to get the correct answer to equations but has difficulty telling you why.
In middle school, I had tried convincing his GT teachers to exit him from the program because of non-completions; however, the majority of his teachers encouraged me to keep him in. We ended up writing an intervention plan to attack organization and time management and his grades shot up from failing to nearly 90+ in all advanced classes. His grades tend to go from one end of the spectrum to the other... hardly any consistent grades in the middle.
The way his GT coordinator put it.... his IQ test scores show he has the ability and private testing show he does have a disability with executive functioning. If we had placed him in a regular classroom, he would probably make the same type of grades. Why not keep the bar high and hold him to it.
Because of his teacher’s positive encouragement and persistence... he loves school and finally has some consistency in grades.
According to a 60 Minutes episode, ADHD drugs can significantly improve the focus and subsequent exam scores on non-dx college students. I didn't hear any expert refute this fact.
So it looks like something(s) in these pills is/are greatly enhancing cognitive ability for all beyond just helping a child function normally in an academic environment.
I was hoping someone with direct experience can shed some light on this in this forum.
Maybe you do not have a science background but you still have NOT shown in any way that adderall "MORE than levels the playing field".
Adderall increases ability to focus (just one portion of cognition BTW) so it can help children who lack the ability to focus i.e. ADHD students but how does that MORE than level the playing field?
Claiming that it makes ADHD students more focused than non-ADHD students is like claiming anti-psychotic drugs make people who take them MORE sane than people who do not need them. Logical fallacy.
So while we all realize that taking adderall when you do not need it is cheating you have not yet remotely shown how it is unfair for people who need focus agents to use them. Get it yet?
My child has ADHD dysgraphia and dyslexia. Her IQ is 140. While her IQ is in the 99% or above, her working memory is in the 2% of same aged kids (without ADHD). She can do higher ordrer math equations but because of her working memory cannot remember simple math facts such as 2 + 8. Medication helps her hold numbers in her head for the short term so she can solve a problem. It does not increase her IQ. It allows her working memory to function at a closer to normal level (maybe in the 30-40%). The medication does not level the playing field. The playing field will never be level. In general people with ADHD (and dyslexia) have higher IQs than normal people. Medication does not enhance IQ.
I have a concern I thought I would share - I'm interested in hearing other's comments. IF it's already been covered, can someone direct me to the thread?
Some children in the local GT program in our elementary school district have been diagnosed with ADHD and have been prescribed drugs such as Adderall which enhance cognitive ability. Thus, they often test higher (skewing test results) and reap the benefits of more academic enrichment. GT kids who are not taking the drugs and not testing as high are deemed ineligible for the program.
It doesn't seem fair that kids who take the drugs can skew test results so that another GT kid (not taking the drugs) does not make the cut.
What do you all think? Especially parents/teachers/administrators with direct experience. Is or should the use of cognitive enhancing drugs be factored into the equation of whether a child is eligible for a GT program, especially if it means denying another GT child who got very high scores, but not as high as those taking the cognitive enhancing drug?
Adderall does not "enhance cognitive ability". It allows children who have a demonstrated difficulty with executive functioning, focus, and remaining on task to do so. IOW, it levels the playing field for children with a demonstrated functional disability so their their cognitive abilities work properly.
Give a non-disabled kid Adderall and it will not make him smarter. If we could just drug people into being smart, I'd be all for putting Adderall into the water supply in the Capitol building.
Further, most gifted programs (I can't speak for every single one in every single school district, of course) do not choose one child over the other. Your kid makes the cut off, or he does not. Whether or not Susie's kid is in the gifted program has no bearing on whether yours is.
Multiply exceptional kids have enough to deal with. You know how out-of-place the average gifted kid feels in a group of "average" kids? Multiply that. 2E kids are not the norm in gifted, nor in SpEd, and certainly not in the average classroom. They certainly don't need adults with Drug Envy making their lives harder by intimating they're "not good enough".
I never stated that if a child has a disability he/she shouldn't qualify, so it's best for you to read carefully and not misinterpret.. It's that a child has a disability and takes a drug that can more than level the playing field.
It seems like there are a significant number of kids dx with ADHD in the GT program - possibly statistically more than their percentage of population in general ed. I read posts from many parents who have "twice exceptional" kids in the GT program, but as another person posted - it's difficult to ascertain due to privacy issues.
BTW - our school district doesn't use IQ tests to gain entry into the GT program - it uses COGAT.
I wonder if administrators should take into consideration if the child is not taking certain drugs and recognize that the child is still GT material, if you will, even if he/she didn't ace the exam with the help of drugs.
You needn't write "twice exceptional" in italics like the parents made it up or something. While you claim you never said these kids don't belong, your bias- based on lack of or misinformation-- is quite clear.
According to a 60 Minutes episode, ADHD drugs can significantly improve the focus and subsequent exam scores on non-dx college students. I didn't hear any expert refute this fact.
Oh, well now there's a source. Sixty Minutes has also claimed Google employees are forbidden to buy luxury items and notoriously neglected to factcheck shows on video piracy, heparin vial mixups, and oil companies in the Amazon. (Though they did showcase Lady Gaga saying she smokes dope while writing music, which is probably true.) Further, Adderall is hardly the sum total of treatment for ADHD, or even typical of its classification. It's quite common for people to react in one way to one med and not another, even within the same drug family (in the case of Adderall, stimulants)-- or even in different ways under different circumstances. Without seeing the actual study referenced I'd be loathe to blithely make broad assumptions. YMMV, of course.
In fact, the University of South Florida did a study recently of multiply exceptional children in the public school systems' gifted programs. You might want to search that one.
IME adderall or other ADD drugs do not change test scores--not much anyway. As another poster has mentioned, it can help with consistency of getting work turned in. The reason that I believe it doesn't have much effect on test scores is b/c those with ADD tend to perform well in a novel situation or where the stakes are high and they tend to keep themselves interested in the test by doing the techniques naturally that testgivers tell kids to do to get a higher score.
An example is when the MAP tests or the EOC exams are coming up in our school, the teacher will teach some techniques to make a higher score on the exam like doing all the easy ones first. A kid with ADD has already figured this one out--not necessarily b/c he's smarter but b/c it's the way the ADD mind works--it follows the path of least resistance. Then the child will go thru the test again and do the next easiest ones and so on and will be more likely to finish the test with a high score b/c the only questions left undone are ones she might have gotten wrong anyway.
I've worked with kids w/o ADD also, and you cannot get many of these kids to do the easy ones first--they will insist on doing problems one-by-one in order and it's almost impossible to get them to change this.
As a teacher with ADD myself, I can tell you that I have never taken a test or done a worksheet w/o skipping around. If I had a math worksheet with 25 problems on it, some of them were repeats. You know, 5x7=, 7x5=, and so on. I'd go and do the one and then the repeats b/c I was lazy you see. But it was a technique that also helped me learn better and finish faster so I could go on to more interesting things like my book, lol.
Fascinating! My son does that, and it drives me crazy, but it's good to know his scattered way of approaching his work has a benefit.
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