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    Joined: Nov 2012
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    I hear your concerns. I asked because I suspect you see more forest, whereas my lens is a few trees.

    For most gifted programming, I think you’re right - cross-grade grouping and acceleration (SS or global skips) would cover off most needs, and not be unnecessarily exclusionary. It would also maximize opportunities for students to grow when coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, while respecting the needs of individual learners. I hope the educational policy zeitgeist ultimately arrives there.

    To this point…
    Originally Posted by Kai
    The only sorts of programs that are ethically defensible are those that provide students who gain entry into the program something that they need that would be inappropriate for students who do not gain entry.

    …I think you’re speaking to highly specialized instruction, particularly for more extreme gifted outliers.

    For instance - and I’m sure every poster here has several similar examples - my DS9 and I are running a summer “book club”, in which the two of us read and discuss themes in more unusual books that would not normally be covered in school. The current book is HG Wells’ “The Island of Dr Moreau”, which DS selected. DS has delved into topics I would never have dreamed he’d enjoy at this age, and his insights, frankly, would be a better fit for undergrad literature and philosophy discussions than elementary school.

    Today’s discussion ranged from intersubjectivity, to genetics, skin grafting surgical techniques using shark tissue, the origins of religion, and an exploration of the epistemology of pleasure and pain (and moral vs embodied pleasure/pain). My role here is, in my view, to help DS hone his ability to formulate and test arguments, and to support learning terminology that furthers his inquiry. So I’m a sounding board and catalyst for exploration - a humanoid idea-grappling dummy - rather than a teacher.

    In no way do I believe this kind of exploration is feasible, even in HG magnets, until late high school. DS has a particularly accommodating teacher and education plan, which allows for a lot of deep-dive independent studies, but it doesn’t provide the same fulfillment that a seminar/Socratic discussion generates. And so, like many families here, I try to keep my beastie fed with brain snacks so he doesn’t have to go rogue!

    But I’m saying nothing new for this crowd. Our kiddos don’t fit in neat categories, so our individual children’s “best” solutions may not be widely generalizable.


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    It's always annoyed me immensely with CTY courses, especially as a non US family, our age/grade correlations are not necessarily the same. And my interactions with CTY lead me to believe that this approach isn't about acceleration anyway (which you would hope an organization that exists for gifted kids would be considering), it's about slight variations in age / grade.

    When faced with enrolling our child into a course, for which their CTY teacher (from a related course they were finishing) had recommended them as ready for and likely to delight in, they were knocked back due to age, not grade. Or rather we were told it was grade, but the grade the child should have been in was what counted in that instance.

    And SET is AGE for taking the SAT, not grade. They do know that age matters, but they're assuming only slight fuzziness in grades and (presumably) trying to accommodate what has been taught as a result.

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    Originally Posted by aquinas
    Our kiddos don’t fit in neat categories, so our individual children’s “best” solutions may not be widely generalizable.
    Absolutely. Our experience was that "best" with regard to in-school academics was more like "least worst," and that things besides academics were the reason for attending school at all.

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    Originally Posted by MumOfThree
    And SET is AGE for taking the SAT, not grade. They do know that age matters, but they're assuming only slight fuzziness in grades and (presumably) trying to accommodate what has been taught as a result.

    Just…ugh. These kinds of discontinuities seem so unnecessary.


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    MumOfThree or others, have your children taken any of the CTY AP classes? Those are my current plan of last resort for DS. Curious to see how much acceleration (if any) they allow.


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    We haven't done any AP courses no.

    As an international homeschooling family I took some liberties with the youngest child's "grade" and enrolled them in "The Process of Writing" which is for "gr 5-6", when halfway through our yr4. Which wasn't much of a stretch, but with her birthdate I think she would have been considered start of yr4 in the USA. On completion she was then allowed to progress to the next course "Writing for an audience" for gr7+, while still 9-10yrs old.

    It seemed like in individually paced classes they'd let her run through a sequence based on successful completion of the previous course. But they pulled the "needs to be with kids her own age" card on "live" classes offered Summer 2020.

    At the moment we are thinking very seriously about starting her at Crimson Academy. Who mostly do British curriculum but also have some AP courses.

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    We have not. For AP-level coursework, we have used online college courses at the local CC or regional state uni, but I know this isn't a practical option in many communities, in addition to being sometimes not that affordable (we have state-subsidized dual enrollment). Discussion happened via asynchronous forum postings (or, in some cases, videoconference breakout rooms). With async discussion, the age or nominal grade of posters didn't typically come up, except in one case where students were asked specifically where they were in their education, resulting in two DE students having to out themselves as high school students. Age wasn't an issue at registration, although the institutions in question reserved the right to ask pre-high school age students to come in for an eyeball.

    I think the options for online math courses prior to dual enrollment are somewhat better than for humanities, with providers like AOPS carrying students up through calc. The best stable solution for humanities-type discussion I've experienced both as a parent and as a child has been to be part of a multi-sibling/cousin system of GT learners. Which, of course, isn't something most people can control!


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