Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy If the schools won't accelerate, should you?

The public schools where we live do not have gifted programs and have little acceleration, although students can take AP Calculus in 11th grade. Our 12yo son, a middle child, is in 7th grade and is taking Algebra I in school and Algebra II at the Russian School of Math (RSM). He has scored in the 700s on the the math SAT. He wants to take precalculus at RSM over the summer.

The public schools will likely not deviate from the Algebra II/Geometry/Pre-calculus/Calculus sequence in grades 8-11. So I wonder what the benefit of accelerating him over the summer is. OTOH, we don't want to discourage him.

Personally, I see the benefit as your child receiving appropriately challenging math placement over the summer, and being among academic/intellectual peers... even though such appropriate challenge and placement with true peers cannot currently be secured during the school year.

IMO, a few months of the right "fit" is better than no experience of the right "fit." In the future, looking back on this experience may help him with other decision making.

pm'd you

If he is motivated he should probably take the precalculus (RSM). It will more than likely be a better course than the school would teach anyway. We are looking at some Stanford online math classes in the future.

We are kind of in the same boat but my ds 15 just finished honors pre-calc his freshman.

There are so many variables... quality of the teacher..etc

Studying CTY SET kids (SAT math >= 700) suggests that appropriate acceleration doesn't just get kids "to the same place, just sooner", but rather boosts kids onto a higher career trajectory -- more productive, more pre-eminent track -- for their entire careers. (For the kids studied, this was especially true for boys -- for girls in the earlier times, effects seemed to be moderated by the girls' tendency to veer into less mathematically based careers.)

"When Less Is More: Effects of Grade Skipping on Adult STEM Productivity Among Mathematically Precocious Adolescents", Park, Lubinski, & Benbow
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Park-Lubinski-Benbow-2013.pdf

The study was looking at whole grade acceleration, comparing matched kids who did grade-skip vs. those who could have but didn't. I know that's not the situation and question you're asking about -- you're asking not about whole-grade acceleration but rather about a situation where an enriching/accelerating math summer may put your kid further out-of-sync with the school math curriculum. Nevertheless, I bring up this study as it suggests there can be significant lost opportunity resulting from holding mathematically gifted kids (back) "on age track".

I'm curious what his motivation for taking the class is. Does he have plan for going forward?

I feel your pain - we live with a system that offers no flexibility whatsoever within a given track, so we usually scramble to find challenge and enrichment in fields that aren’t mandatory subjects in school or at least not within his track. So far, that has been lots of computer science, robotics and Ancient Greek, of all things...and music and sports, outside of school, to keep him social and busy.

It’s hard if your child wants and needs more in precisely those mandatory subjects. But if the school will do what the school will do anyway, I see no reason not to enrol your child in whatever math class they are interested in and can handle. I assume your child is old enough to understand that there is no point in then complaining that math class in school is even more boring as a result - they’ll just have to suffer through the repetition, make sure they collect their As and don’t alienate the teacher on the way...

I do not want to go all Waldorf on you, but I’m wondering why you wouldn’t want to save up the accelerated class for extra stimulation during the school year, and use the summer vacation to make sure that your child gets lots and lots of outside time, exercise and maybe art or music or whatever might float his boat. I am assuming you live in Boston, so remember, winter is coming!

I just heard today that DS11 will have to start mandatory computer science next year in 7th grade. That somehow wasn’t on my radar since CS was strictly elective back when I was in school. I recall now that DS11 has frequently helped DH prepare the tests for DH’s computer science class that he teaches to 10th or 11th graders...that should have been a clue....and kind of predicts more boredom down the line LOL.

I glanced through the paper. It is an interesting read, but I *strongly* disagree with the conclusion. Many metrics that the authors used, for example, age to obtain PhD/MD/JD, to publish the first paper, total citation at a certain age, are not that meaningful when we consider the age bias. And frankly, grade-skipping is a self-selecting process. Kids do not skip a grade unless they are academically capable. The numbers do not tell all the stories.

I am saying this because I was a among a group of 200 kids who entered one particular college at 15 years old and younger in the 90's. Most of us got our BS/BA under 20. Not knowing what to do, we went on pursuing PhDs. We are all in our late 30s and early 40s now.

True, almost all of us have advanced degrees, many from prestigous universities. But only a few still work in science. Some of us are just not equipped with the other skills that are necessary to be successful in academia, where the success is evaluated in this paper.

Academic capability is one crucial factor of future success. But its importance should not be overblown.

Now, coming back to the original question, the answer is a definitive yes, provided that your son is interested and motivated.

Yes, accelerate. At a minimum, I would advocate to have your son contest the end of year exam for whatever courses he takes. Then, his schedule will, at least, be open to other subjects that aren’t redundant.