My daughter is also at a charter school with individualized levels. This may not be true everywhere, but I have found that everyone says no if I ask for compacting. However, we have been able to negotiate that my daughter can do a few problems to demonstrate mastery and then move on to the next assignment (instead of having to work through all of the problems). It isn't a pretest system like is commonly recommended, but seems to be more easily accepted by some schools.
My daughter likes this approach much better. It does mean that she gets through the curriculum much faster. However, it doesn't increase depth of learning and doesn't help to make the work more interesting. That would require specialized assignments for her, which would be better but more effort for the teacher. I have sent in her Art of Problem Solving book and the teacher says she can supplement with that, but it has been hard to actually do. We will be working on that more in the fall.
Reading/language arts is my daugher's favorite subject and that has gone extremely well with this system because she spontaneously adds to the assignments. It has worked less well for math because she has less enthusiasm for it and there is no opportunity for her to gain enthusiasm.
If your child actually works with other children and a teacher all working on the same material, that can help. Realistically, if your child compacts material and most others don't pass the pretests (or sample questions), then it is had for teachers to have time to work with them individually and they can end up doing lots of worksheets or computer work. Just being assigned to a higher grade level doesn't increase the speed of the class.
Last edited by apm221; 05/31/14 05:11 AM.
