Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Any reason NOT to do mid year acceleration?

DD13 just finished 7th grade. Many of you have followed our story for years - every possible LD and processing issue. She spent 4 years OOD in a special Ed school that did a great job remediating her dyslexia, barely touched her math disability and offered radical exceleration in her area of greatest strength. In addition to doing 8th grade English as 3rd grader and 1–1 HS English 4th-6th grade she also was able to choose an enrichment project each marking period in any topic of her choice. Usually she chose history but would occasionally do something in science. By 6th grade it became clear neither the peers nor the enrichment were appropriate and it was time to move on.

Last year she ended up with a combination program that included one day a week in the district TAG program, one day a week at a private that offers 1-1 classes, one day a week at a nature education program and 2 days a week with 1-1 services including speech, AT and targeted math intervention. It was awesome. The 1-1 classes included upper level HS English as well as history and science that was a MS/HS hybrid. Moving forward she will remain in the private with 1-1 classes. Since the processing issues and LDs make everything so much more time consuming for her I raised concern about her ability to carry a full course load through her high school years. Since she is taking high school level courses anyway I asked how we can make sure she is banking some of these credits so she can take a lower course load later if needed.

At our last IEP meeting our school district said she can't legally earn high school credits - regardless of the level of class she is taking - until she is enrolled as a 9th grader. They said a 7th grader taking an AP math or science class would not receive HS credit for the class. It would just be considered their 7th grade math or science class. They offered to accelerate DD that day from 7th to 9th grade if we wanted her to earn high school credits for the classes she was taking. I don't like to make any kind of decision without thinking about all possible ramifications so I declined.

The current plan, unless I uncover a down side, is to have her do fall semester of 8th grade with the same MS/HS combo with the intention of filling any gaps she may have. (Since the school is all 1-1 each class is designed and delivered at the level and with the format that each student needs.) Then in January excelerate her to 9th grade so she has a 1 semester head start on HS credits.

Is there a flaw in my plan? I'm not sure what, if anything, starting HS a semester early might cost her. She will still be able to enroll in the nature program as an 8th grader in the fall. Since the program goes by age I assume there's no problem for them if she does a mid year grade skip. Her speech, math and AT will still be provided 1-1 by the district so no problem there. She is a musical theater kid so may have to forego any K-8th grade shows that come up. Her summer arts camp offers a special program for high school students that she's been dying to do so she might get a head start on that.

I have a nagging feeling that I might be missing something though. Is there any reason NOT to do the mid year acceleration? Her math remains a combo of early elementary and algebra so she will continue to work 1-1 with a special Ed math specialist. I assume that should keep IEP eligibility a non-issue. And her processing issues make attending a large in-district high school pretty much impossible. My consultant raised the question of losing a year of services but the district didn't feel that was an issue - she would remain eligible for services until age 21. But then again I don't necessarily trust the district personnel. We want to be sure we aren't walking into a hornets nest...

On the road, so this will be short. I'll try to come back with more if I have a chance.

Your consultant is correct about losing a year of services. To age 21 typically applies to those who have not accepted/earned a high school diploma. But then, if she's met diploma criteria, presumably she won't need the services, or will have graduated to accommodations only.

I agree that there are advantages to collecting some ELA and social studies credits now, especially since you need four years of those, and only three of math and science.

Not sure about your circumstances, but where we are, while HS requirements cannot be waived or fulfilled with courses taken in earlier grades (I.e., you still need the requisite umber of math courses taken during the nominal HS years), those courses can be included on the HS transcript as elective credits. As in our case, you may need to push up the chain a bit to get clarification on whether this applies in your state.

Before you make a final decision, check with your state educational agency as well as the central office of your school district to get a definitive list of graduation requirements and you may discover that there is no need to accelerate your DD for a semester unless you are trying to save your district money by removing the obligation to provide services earlier than necessary. That age 21 requirement is only for certificate kids, not diploma kids. If I had to do it over, I would not have allowed my oldest DS to qualify to graduate at 18 as he would have benefited from services until age 21 and there is a dearth of services for youths in that 18-21 age range in my state.

Similarly to Spaghetti, our state/district only requires about 22 credits to graduate and students typically earn 8 credits per year. Most students can graduate in 3 years if they double up on English one of the years and social studies one of the semesters. Since last year, high school students are supposed to take math every year of high school but if you are graduating a year early and have at least Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II, you would be okay anyhow. Unlike in your district, most of the students in our district also enter high school with at least 1 or 2 high school credits due to Algebra I and/or a year or two of a foreign language in middle school. Most GT tracked students enter high school with 3-5 credits. DS entered with 8 and will probably graduate high school with double the credits "needed" after including dual enrollment courses. However, a student cannot enter high school with credit for an "AP" course on his transcript prior to high school due to CB limitations although that student can certainly ace the AP exam and argue for placement.

If your DD intends to continue to college, then you want to make her as prepared as possible, which means more education, not less, prior to high school graduation.

These are the things I'd look into before making the decision to accelerate to high school - they're all based on my own local experience and my 2e kid, so take the for what they are - possibly meaningless in your school district and for your dd!

Your primary reason for acceleration (from what I understand) is to gain extra "time" for your dd to get through high school credits. If I could dodo anything in hindsight for our 2e ds who has just finished high school, it would be to find ways to give him more time to get through his studies. Even though he was taking classes he was well suited for intellectually he spent far more time on homework than other students. So, as always, I think your concern about finding that time is spot-on in terms of understanding what your dd may need and what would benefit her the most as she enters high school.

There are other things I see in hindsight though, that would make me second-guess accelerating. Please do take this advice with a huge grain of salt - we purposely chose to not accelerate our ds and might have done the same even if he hadn't had his huge 2nd e. That said, not accelerating ds when he was young
caused some issues for ds, primarily boredom with depth of discussions in the classroom and with pace of classroom learning. You've done a great job of advocating for subject-accelerated learning for your dd throughout the years, and it sounds like you'll be able to continue to advocate for appropriate level instruction throughout the remainder of middle school. If the only reason you're looking for grade-level acceleration is being able to spread high school credits over a longer period of years, I would look closely at all of your options for doing that outside of accelerating. As others have mentioned above, our high school requires less credits to graduate than most students take each semester. Many of the typical students who enter high school on a typical path in 9th grade are taking less than a full schedule by senior year or are gaining elective and other credit in areas not required for graduation. Our district also offers high school credit for outside courses such as online, summer programs etc, and students are given high school credit (here) for math and foreign language classes taken in middle school. If you haven't already, I'd recommend trying to find the written policy, wherever it resides in your district, re what can be used as high school credit. I realize it's likely that the school district staff at your dd's IEP meeting knew what the policy is for your district, I'm also by nature a bit skeptical about these things based on my own experiences with local school staff

While looking into high school policy, I'd also verify exactly what the school district will allow in terms of number of years spent *in* high school. Our district assumes kids will be graduating in 4 years unless they just aren't going to be graduating. Services until 21 also (here) seem to apply only to kids who are non-diploma track. Students who receive diplomas are also graduated from their IEPs.

Since your motivation is to gain your dd time to get through her high school courses, think through all of the other places you can potentially find time for your dd outside of accelerating. Can she earn credit through any her theatre work (either summer or during the school year)? My kids all earned their pe credit by participating in sports programs they enjoyed outside of school. DS was able to earn elective credit through his CTY summer courses. Can you replace any courses with self-paced online courses? The bonus for ds when he did this was he was able to choose a required history course that relied less on written essays for his grade, therefore freeing up what would have been extremely time consuming for him due to his disability. Our youngest dd (also 2e, and a competitive athlete) will be entering high school this year. Although she's had successful remediation for her reading challenges and she doesn't struggle with processing speed and organizational issues as ds does, she's chosen a challenging high school program and will be continuing to compete in her sport which means 3-4 hours per day during the school week spent training for sport. That leaves very little time for homework during the week, and she's a kid who's always also been hugely insistent on a bit of downtime during the weekend. She's choosing to take her math via self-paced online courses so that she can both move at her own speed (math and science are her strength areas) while also scheduling the work for the class on the days she has free time in her schedule. Another place to potentially find time is in course selection - another thing that I would do differently in hind sight (some of it ds did ok on his own, some of it ds was too eager to do what the school expected him to do). DS' school really pushed the importance of all-around "looking good" for college, but most students have areas they are stronger and weaker in. DS stuck with the recommendations to take challenging English, history classes as well as sticking with the suggested plan for 4 years of foreign language, and those classes all took up around 80-90% of his study time thanks to his challenges with writing and communication. In hindsight, he would have most likely been happier and definitely would have had more free time if he'd stuck to advanced courses in the areas he was strongest in and not worried so much about being in advanced courses all-around... which leads to my next point...

When our kids are younger, we tend to look at the next general school level as what we're preparing for, but realistically, it would have helped me a ton when ds was entering high school to instead have thought more about preparing for the actual long game - college and beyond. I wish I'd spent more time thinking about what course work he *really* needed for the type of college he'd eventually be interested in. We followed the advice of his counselor and I did do a lot of reading online etc - but none of that was personalized for our ds. He graduated high school with a great gpa and a high school transcript filled with rigorous courses representing a well-rounded student - but he didn't need all of those *specific* courses. He could have settled for a less-than-AP or less-than-honors in the areas he wasn't super-strong in and it would have eliminated a ton of homework.



ITA with spaghetti on this - my ds matured so much during high school (so did my non-2e dd, but he needed those high school years in a way she didn't "need need" them - not easy to explain, but as he grew through those years he did make amazing progress in both understanding himself and figuring out how to deal with his disabilities. He also continued to need a ton of support... and to be honest, if I could have him stay here for another year of high school before he goes off into the real world I would, because I honestly think he could use more support as he continues to grow through next year - but that's not because he didn't start high school early and spend five years in hs, it's because he's now 18 and next year he'll be 19. The developments that most "grew" ds during high school in terms of helping with his disabilities had nothing to do with academics, and everything to do with age and life experience.

I spent so much time thinking about academics and accommodations etc when ds was in middle school heading into high school that I missed seeing something I think most parents don't realize until their first child goes through high school: the child that enters high school is going to be very different than the child exiting high school in one very significant way - they are going to become independently thinking young adults who start making the decisions they want to make. They may seem independent in middle school but it's nothing like where they'll be at in just a few years

Best wishes as you consider all the options!

polarbear

Can you just do an extra year high school? It just sounds like what you have now is too good to mess with

Thanks so much for all the feedback. I know the only reason I have been able to advocate so successfully for my DD is all the support, information and "been there done that" advice I've gotten here over the past 7 years. You have all been life changing. Please accept my very sincere thanks.

I looked at my district's graduation requirements and as several of you said they require 23 credits to graduate spread out as follows:

English 4 (1 in American Literature or American Studies)
Social Science 3 (1 in American History and .5 in Civics)
Math 3
Science 3 (1 in Biology)
PE 1.5
CTE (Career and Technical Ed) .5
Fine Arts 1
Health .5
Electives 6.5

So this would work out to a rough average of 6 credits per year for 4 years. With her processing and LD issues I just don't think this level of output is a reasonable expectation for her, especially as she reaches higher levels of classes.

A few interesting things I have taken note of:

1. Foreign Language: Due to her language based learning disabilities she would be eligible for an exemption. However I don't see foreign language on the list of graduation requirements. I can only assume there was a recent change and they would now be included as electives. DD is determined to try to learn a language and is scheduled to start French in the fall. I had thought ASL would be her best bet but she is not interested and there was a clear personality mismatch between her and the ASL teacher at the private when they tried working together this spring. I had heard Spanish would likely be easier for a dyslexic kid to pick up but when she met the Spanish and French teachers she had a very strong preference for working with the French teacher. The fact that she wants to someday move to France and her true goal is to learn Haitian Creole might have had something to do with this too... Anyway I'm not convinced a traditional foreign language is going to be successful. A recent effort with a learn French phrases audio cd was a dismal failure. I'm guessing her auditory processing and speech issues will combine with her LD issues to make this very hard. I'm eager for any words of wisdom. If there is any chance of success I'm hoping the 1-1 format increases the possibility...

2. Math: After years of searching I finally located the elusive Special Ed Math Teacher and he is fabulous! Our district paid for him to work 1-1 with DD each week and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Its only been a bit over a year since numbers started having any meaning for DD. We had been told she had a good understanding of high level concepts and once she moved past the basic mechanics of elementary math she would take off. (Similar to her high level comprehension being different from her agonizingly slow learning to decode.) This year we saw that in action. We started focusing on "Consumer Math" - my goal was for her to be able to buy a candy bar without getting ripped off. The special ed math guy quickly discovered that she has quite the knack for algebra. Apparently she intuitively understands certain concepts and he had her doing the same work he was doing with his community college students. He and the district have both been clear that the requirement is 3 years of math - not specific math courses. She may get 3 years of consumer math or 3 years of algebra. Basically they are just going to call it "DD math". The private doesn't want to touch her math so she will happily keep working with this math magician and I will be thrilled for her to develop whatever skills he can get her to attain. She and I are both hoping math does what reading did and all come together at some point. If it doesn't, though, I am confident that working with this special ed math specialist is giving her the best possible chance of success.

3. English: As it has been explained to me she needs 4 years of English but that doesn't translate to English 9, 10, 11 and 12. According to the private's course catalogue she has already completed what they call 9, 10 and 11. This fall she can focus on what they call English 12. THEN for high school credits she can take ANY 4 credits in English. Because of the 1-1 model she can have complete autonomy in designing what she wants. ie Shakespeare, Historical Fiction, Mysteries, etc. Classes that might otherwise count as electives can be used to fill her English requirement. She just needs one credit to be in American Literature (or American Studies whatever that means...)

The 1-1 private is a chain of schools that has been discussed on the boards in the past. It is a sensory friendly environment and makes it possible to totally individualize each student's classes. DD can't do handwritten work. Period. Our AT specialist has worked with their staff to get them up to speed on how DD needs to learn. She won't be doing torturous handwritten homework. (I learned A TON from your DS's experience polarbear about how difficult this can make things...) Basically she will be taking the same classes either way but as a 9th grader the classes count for credit, as an 8th grader they won't.

This past semester she worked with the AT specialist on developing "a process". DD puts in WAY too many hours on each project - its common for her to spend 10 hours or more on something another student would do in 20 or 30 minutes. The AT specialist continues to stress streamlining her process, working "smarter not harder" and finding alternate ways to show her knowledge. This will remain in effect moving forward as they wean DD off to less direct work with the AT consultant. The school program also includes what they call "homework café" with a teacher who monitors and supports. The idea is that all school work is done in their building but DD prefers to bring it home so she can work on it at her own pace.

So yes the goal is to give her more time to complete the number of needed classes because the amount of work needed will simply take her so much longer than an NT kid (or one with fewer extra E's...) I appreciate the hopeful tone of expecting huge growth during her high school years. She is already extremely mature and thoughtful. It is interesting to consider if her neurological development will continue to mature over the next years. That would be awesome. She has learned over the past year or so to simply accept her unique neurology as a fact rather than something to be embarrassed by. In fact the screen saver on her district issued iPad is the quote "Yes I having learning disabilities. No I am not stupid."

Interesting point about whether she will be automatically exited upon 23 credits. Maybe one way around that is for her to keep one of the required courses, ie American Literature, US History, Civics or Biology until the end. That way they cant exit her early because she wont have completed the specific courses she needs even if she has somehow earned 23 credits. Good thing to keep in mind - thank you.

Every year since qualifying for OOD our school district has offered ESY. We have always declined because DD has needed her summers to escape from the stress of inappropriate school environments, focus on the thing she enjoys and just relax. This past year was different. No school stress to escape from. Maybe moving forward she will find something she wants to do for school credit - I guess I can't rule that out any more. And I suppose she could find an online class she would want to do. But right now I'm thinking the 1-1 personalized program is as good as we can hope to find.

And college - until a year or 2 ago I didn't see how it could be possible. Then her dyslexia intervention kicked in. Then she got rock solid AT support which gives her the ability to find work arounds. And of course we found the amazing special ed math guy. She still can't really function in a large, over stimulating environment. However as part of the TAG program this past year they had the kids do college planning. I'm not really sure why but each kid had to identify 3 target schools, determine a major, figure out course schedules and how to pay for it all. DD came up with attending a college in Vermont specifically for students with language based learning disabilities and then going on to film school. For the first time it all seems achievable.

Does any of this detail change any of your input? My hope (although DD's could differ) is for her to take a low enough coursed load to not become overwhelmed, graduate at expected time and then take a gap year that should match up with DH's next sabbatical. A year to travel as a family before she heads off on her own.

I just hope I'm not being naïve and giving the district some mechanism I'm not seeing for pulling her IEP or not paying for the private and services. I'm hopeful that 4 years from now we will feel her speech and AT support has come as far as would be possible and any services she could potentially give up if she were somehow able to carry a higher course load wont matter all that much.

As always happy to hear any thoughts or input.

I am really impressed with the amount of support you have been able to access. NZ mainstreams practically everyone until high school then has special ed for those expected to top out at about 3rd grade level. I still feel though that if it is working now and she is stress free that another year is a good thing and high school can wait. I would see if high school at three quarter speed was allowed and would affect her college options.