My concerns about grade accelerations are best articulated by the recommendations for best practices published in Gifted Child Quarterly. Toward the end of the report, the author, Maureen Neihart, warns that acceleration “may be harmful to unselected students who are arbitrarily accelerated on the basis of I.Q., achievement, or social maturity,”
I think that this is the key quote here and I'd honestly agree. I've seen unsuccessful accelerations. They usually involved kids who were selected on the basis of
one of these factors mentioned or maybe two with the third being a substantial weakness.
For instance, a kid with two of the above listed traits: high IQ kid & high achievement in most subjects, but who has Asperger's & would, thus, likely be fairly weak in the area of social maturity. I've seen kids like this skipped and they suffered terribly socially.
Another instance: a kid with one of the above mentioned strengths: high achievement, but more average IQ and social maturity. I've seen kids like this who are very high performers who are skipped or subject accelerated based on their high performance and who later falter because they are not intellectually able enough to keep up with the higher level work as they get into harder levels of the work.
Although I'm not a complete fan of the Iowa Acceleration Scale only by virtue of the fact that it seems fairly subject to subjective opinions in many areas, it does at least look at
all of the areas that should be considered when looking at skipping a kid: ability, achievement, and social. My one kiddo who is grade accelerated was an excellent candidate for the skip using the IAS and it has been successful. She's a huge advocate of being placed ahead and feels like the fit, while still imperfect, is much better than it would have been without the skip (socially as well).
