Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Skipping grades vs. Accelerated work

What are you opinions on this? Do you think its better to skip your child in school or keep them in their grade with accelerated work? Obviously the childs' temperament and maturity level come in to play but let's assume that emotionally they could handle being skipped.

My dd is 5, she started kindergarten at 4yrs old. After moving to a new state and new school she was assessed after a week of starting school. Academically she's at 2nd grade level. By the end of the 3 weeks of testing Lauren was emotionally done with tests and being pulled out of class. The suggestion from the school was that she not be skipped since when asked to do a task she was not familiar with she got upset and put her head down. (she's a perfectionist and does not like not knowing something). Anyway, they determined this to be a bit of immaturity and felt she should stay in her current class with adjusted work. Although I know it was not immaturity but simply frustration at the weeks of testing etc and an umfamiliar question, I did agree that keeping her in kindergarten with adjusted work would be best for her since she was already a lot younger than the other children. Her kindergarten teacher actually didnt agree with the "maturity" statement, telling me that Lauren has been doing a special reading class with older children (3rd and 4th graders) and she is excelling and is doing very well socially with them.

A concern of mine is that Lauren has recently started telling me that school is boring. During spring break she insisted that she was not going back to Kindergarten but going to first grade instead. I asked her why and her response was "I already know everything. The kids in my class don't understand things like I do. Its boring and I don't want to go back." She is obviously aware that she is not like the other kids. She loves her classmates but is rebelling against the classwork etc. Since there's only 6 weeks left of school its really not an issue of skipping her now but in all honesty do you think its better to allow her to skip ahead or continue the accelerated work? (I know a lot of you have experience with this issue)

Sorry so long, but thanks for reading this far. Any advice is appreciated!

Hello,
I�m new to this forum. My husband, our two children and myself live in IL. Our daughter (11 years, 6th grade) is gifted with a moderate learning difference (auditory processing) and is presently in an optimal educational environment at an academically challenging private (Catholic) school. Our son is highly gifted (9 years, 4th grade) and is the clich� square peg in the round hole attending the same fine school.
I believe the pre-school thru 1st grade periods for our two children were the most frustrating times so far. The following is our experiences regarding your topic;

Our daughter attended a private kindergarten before her 5th birthday and excelled. Even though the school recommended she be admitted to 1st grade at the public school it feeds into, the principle refused based on age. She attended a second year of kindergarten with the public school and was labeled as gifted and a delight to have in class. I was assured that the 1st grade curriculum would challenge her because she was put with the teacher who offers a differentiated curriculum. This often meant that she and a few other students were allowed to read their chapter books while the teacher instructed the rest of the class.

About halfway though her 1st grade year, my husband and I began to make appointments with the superintendent and write to and address the school board at its public meetings. Our request was that they adopt a method to access readiness for early entrance and grade acceleration. We knew that our son would not be as compliant as our daughter and feared he would be incorrectly labeled because he would not tolerate being �taught� in kindergarten what he had know since he was 18 months. Our motive was to help other children as well as our own. We were met only with indifference and hostility from every angle on this issue. The exception were a few educators who privately said they agreed with us and a few parents who wished the same for their kids, but said they didn�t have skin as thick as ours.

At literally the last hour-one week before our son was scheduled to begin K at the public school, I called our local Catholic school again and literally begged for them to meet him. At the conclusion of the evaluation conducted by the assistant principle, they had no reservations about putting him in 1st grade. Two months into the school year, we removed our daughter from 2nd grade at the public school and placed her into 3rd grade at the Catholic school. We consider it as a 1-� grade jump because the curriculum is far more demanding at the private school than it was at the high standardized test scoring public school.

We believed that early entrance to 1st grade was an easy fix, but were rather concerned about actually skipping a grade. It turned out to be so easy it was almost spooky. The only time I became concerned was the next school year when she entered 4th grade. Non of her prior public school experience had prepared her for the organizational skills and work habits necessary to efficiently tackle the homework required in 4th grade. She was over-whelmed for approximately 6 weeks. I understand this is the same problem many under-challenged gifted students face in high school or college when they finally reach a point were they have to study and work at a subject after coasting along with no effort for so many years.

Our son does well in school but really needs to attend a school for highly gifted students. He does not have a natural tendency to �think inside the box� which is what students are required to do in the lower levels of grade school. He could handle the subject content of two or more grades up, however, his hand writing is not fast enough to keep up with the note taking required for six grade and up. He exemplifies the asynchronous profile found in many highly gifted kids. He is a young scholar with the Davidson Institute and we are very grateful for their support. We know it will continue to be a challenge to appropriately educate him.

In conclusion, (if anyone got this far) my opinion is that a single grade skip in combination with a differentiated curriculum in a safe first step. Especially given the fact that your daughter is telling you what she wants. I believe that inattention and frustration are a result of lack of challenge and that as long as the task isn�t unrealistic, children do meet the high expectations their parents hold for them. My caveat, is that strait A�s may be unrealistic in the short term, however meaningful education will replace �excellence without effort�.

I really appreciate your response. It makes a lot of sense. I certainly do not want her to get so bored in school that she stops doing the work requested of her. Its something to really think about. We're applying for the Young Scholars program right now and hopefully, if she's accepted, we can get headed in the right direction and do whats best for Lauren and her education. Thanks for the advice!

For our kiddos, it seems like one or two skips with further subject acceleration work well. My 9 YO son was pretty happy in half day K and didn't "fight" sitting through things he already knew because he was only there for 2 1/2 hours, with lots of play time and recess etc. In first grade he became miserable (and made his teacher miserable because he was always bugging the other kids when he had nothing to do all day) and we had him tested. At the beginning of the next year, he went to 3rd and to the middle school for math. This year he went to 4th and 8th grade for algebra, science, reading, and computers. In Sept., he will do 5th and 3-4 high school classes. He's happy with the mix of academic challenge and time with age peers, although after 5th he's probably going to make the jump to full time high school.

My 5 YO daughter is much more content to sit quietly, behave, and go with the flow. She's spent all year "learning" how to count and repeat letter sounds even though she's reading and doing math at at least a 3-4th grade level. We're having her tested soon, so we're not quite sure yet how gifted she is or how much acceleration she will need. Right now the plan is to send her to 3rd grade for at least reading and math - we don't know yet if we'll also have her skip a whole grade or not.

For us, in class differentiation never really happened - yes, our son got extra worksheets (no fun!) and was allowed to read, but he wasn't actually taught anything new. Skipping way ahead in his areas of interest and still doing things like lunch, recess, gym etc. with age peers seemed to work well for him.


PS -Delbows - my son can't keep up with handwriting either. When he went from 1st to 6th for math, he had a "note buddy" who took notes on a carbonized notebook and gave him a copy. Now, he still either has a "note buddy" or types.

Wow! You are incredibly fortunate to have such an accommodating school. I had read somewhere that CT was a gifted friendly state. I�m even happier for you if it is a public school that your children attend.

IL is definitely not a gifted friendly state. Our school district does not allow any variation from the grade step regimen. This rigidity works to the districts advantage for the standardized test week. The party line rhetoric is since our school district has such high standards, it isn�t necessary to grade advance anyone.

We count ourselves lucky to have gotten our kids with birthdays after the Sept. 1st deadline into their respective grades with a private school, which is slightly more flexible, and certainly more challenging. I asked for our son to attend math in another grade. I was told that they tried that once, but it didn�t work out. I think the real barrier is class scheduling and teachers� attitude.

We do have a math tutor work with our kids on an intermittent basis and I have just contacted a physics professor from a local university who said he would help us in our search for a physics coach for our son. It�s not easy for us to provide this in combination with private school tuition. The children who really suffer in our area are ones who parents are unable to do the same.

Again, I�m very glad for your children and hope that the next generation of teachers and administrators across the country will have more progressive ideas for gifted Ed.

CT is definitely NOT a gifted friendly state!!! We have no gifted legislation or funding at all. We just got very very lucky:-) His principal and our director of special education have been strong advocates. We are in a pretty low income/ low test score district, but the people have been wonderful and have done there best to make it work. If we were in a different town, or even a different elementary school in our town, things probably wouldn't have worked out this way, and we could never afford a private school.

Our 9 YO is 2E, and his psychological report said he needed "appropriate academic stimulation" in order to minimize symptoms of Asperger's and AD/HD (when they observed him in his 1st grade classroom for 2 hours, he spent 25-30 minutes doing mostly busy work and 1 1/2 hours sitting with nothing to do... definitely not a good setup for a kid with AD/HD, lol). So, they first skipped him as part of his 504 plan. Since then, they realized that it isn't such a big deal, and they are skipping my 5 YO (at least in reading and math) before we even have test scores in.

Anyway, as far as standardized tests: subject acceleration and one grade skip for my son didn't hurt his test scores at all, and that WAS a concern when he skipped 2nd grade - someone mentioned that he should take 2nd grade and skip 3rd instead because 2nd grade test scores "counted" and they wanted his scores (now all years count in CT, but before it was just 2nd, 4th, 6th etc..) Anyway, he still got an almost perfect score on the 3rd grade off-year test, so they stopped worrying about that:-) He gets free school lunch, and special ed for being 2E (two of our school's "failing" categories) and technically, he's listed as a full-time 4th grader taking 8th grade classes, so he took the 4th grade CMT's this year. Having a kid it two special needs categories, who reads way above grade level and does well in algebra, take their 4th grade test doesn't hurt them at all.

I'm sorry to hear your public schools were so inflexible! Unfortunately, it seems that's the rule rather than the exception. We realize how lucky we've been! When we had to move after I got pregnant with our twins (our family had SOOO outgrown our 2 bedroom apartment!!) we spent almost TWO YEARS waiting to find somewhere safe and affordable to live in our tiny district, because we were scared to leave!!! Anyway, no matter how gifted friendly a state is overall, my feeling is that it's the people, and *not* the state or the *rules* that make all the difference:-)

DS was recently tested by a psych who works with a lot of PG kids. She is making a grade skip recommendation with him with the idea that he should still be 2 grade levels ahead of the grade he is skipping into. That means he should be able to make A's without having to put forth an excessive amount of effort - yet still will have to work some to make A's in everything.

I liked that thought. What is the highest grade level at which your daughter would excel in all areas? If the answer is the grade that she is in - then I would opt for accelerated material. If the answer is a grade or two or three beyond where she is, I would opt for skipping grades.

Mary, I totally agree with that idea. For my son, we go by age level for the amount of homework he should be doing. For example, if he were in 3rd grade right now, on average kids in our district are supposed to have 30 minutes of homework and 20 minutes of reading. If he were back in 3rd grade, he'd never have to work at all to get good grades. We skipped him to the point where he has to spend about the same amount of time as other kids his age to get "A's." I wouldn't want him spending hours every night on homework or studying, I also didn't want him to get in the habit of skating through without putting in any effort at all. I think he should be developing the study habits that other kids his age are developing, and a lot of our decisions are actually based on that. If he were spending more than 50 minutes combined on homework I would feel like I let him skip too far (I count reading text books as his reading time.... he reads a lot on his own, but that's not homework) So since 8th and 4th grade had him spending the same amount of time on homework/study as an average 3rd grader, I felt like that was an appropriate placement.

We've done some of each in two different schools - grade skip to 1st in public (CA) with further differentiation in reading and a little in math. Then we were told that was all they would do, no more the next year. We changed schools to a non-profit where DS has been getting accelerated subjects in a 3 year combined classroom. He is about to move up to the next classroom (nominally grades 4-6) and will be the youngest having just turned 8 then. I expect that they will still need to accelerate his math and perhaps a few other subjects even in his first year there, but the school is flexible and promises to do so. Thus, we are finding a combination of skips and accelerations to be the best for us. Once the accelerations really have him in a higher grade in over half his subjects, he gets to move on. The mixed age groupings for classes really help make this successful for us. Good luck!

I am all for skipping grades. It seems to me that kids will have the same quirks (such as perfectionism, which I have never seen anyone grow out of) no matter what grade they are in.

Both of our kids were skipped a grade (1st and 2nd) and even now (4th and 5th) they require acceleration within the classroom. In fact, the plan is for my son to attend 7th grade math next year!

Don't be afraid to let your daughter go where she fits. Of course, if the teachers and administration think she is better off where she is, well, that complicates things. I, myself, would probably go along with them until I felt absolutely sure that she needs to go higher. You can be patient, as long as you are vigilant, which you obvioulsy are.

Please let me know what happens.