Re:IMSA: Drugging the Gifted (Score 1)

I was encouraged by the first paragraph of your post, which begins to question the criteria for calling IMSA successful. You correctly point out the need for a baseline (or, as you said, "control") against which to measure the success of IMSA alumni. Unfortunately, your second paragraph then goes on to do nothing other than present two pieces of anecdotal evidence, only one of which has any detail. This leads me to think that you do not have any interest in an objective evaluation of the school but, rather, a desire to say something bad. This isn't necessarily wrong, but cloaking the attack with a critique of methodology is misleading and therefore wrong. Luckily, the cloak was feeble enough that no permanent damage is likely to have been done. Note that Dr. Lederman never claimed that he was giving academically defensible statistics.

Such statistics do exist; I don't have the time to find them now, so I will respond with anecdotal evidence. Gifted kids in cities and in wealthy neighborhoods often have adequate access to education. Gifted kids in smaller towns usually do not. I am a graduate of the charter class of IMSA. I live in Seattle and work for a Silicon Valley company's software division. I would not have had the exposure to computers in my home town that I had at IMSA; this early immersion helped me get this job. My best friend at IMSA went to work for the Navy/NSA after dropping out of college. His computer skills attained in high school enabled him to get his crypto-spook job. His home town had 700 people and no computers (and I don't mean just in the school). There is a member of the class of '90 living in Seattle, making a mint with the Evil Empire. He is a college dropout and attributes much of his success to his IMSA education. He, too, came from a small town. IMSA gives gifted kids tools they would not have access to in their home towns. If a kid lives in a town that already has computers and gas chromatograph/mass spectrometers in the schools... that kid might want to stay at home.

Residential, state-funded high schools have a liability problem in that they are dealing with minors and have to accept the role of parents. If your reason for animosity against this school has to do with your acquaintance being booted because he wouldn't take his medication, then you at least need to think about what options such an institution realistically has.

BTW, I had a pretty rough time of it at IMSA. I call it the most valuable three years I ever spent in Hell. I held the record for the most often "restricted" (in-room suspension) student at the time. Nevertheless, I plan on supporting institutions like IMSA verbally and financially until I die.

Todd Groner Kopriva