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Okay-- we've done compaction-- BUT-- there are some catches in the how of it, and it often involves a certain level of don't-ask-don't-tell on the part of parents, student, and teachers with respect to administration.

apm really identifies some of the problems that we've had with this strategy all along, I'm afraid--

1. Do just a few still means spending a lot of time demonstrating THAT you know. Often again and again, since curriculum is spiraling in most subjects now. This was bad news.

2. Supplementing is hard for teachers to keep track of, for some reason. Well, I know why-- it's that teachers have too much other stuff to keep track of in the first place, and things like this (especially with compliant, pleasant children) just seems to fall through the cracks.

3. Reading/L.A.-- yes, easy enough to add to assignments, read all of the reading selections (not just "pick one") etc. BUT-- at its heart, this doesn't really supply differentiation if the work itself is not challenging to begin with. DD has never done "spelling" work. It would have been most appropriate when she was in 3rd grade (er-- well, before then, probably, but she wasn't in formal schooling until then)-- but by then the selections were SO far beneath her literacy level that all we could reasonably do with it to make it meaningful was have her pretest the entire year in about five sessions covering 6 weeks each. She missed four words in three years' worth of curriculum, btw-- this is what I mean by not being at an appropriate level. She might have been motivated by a spelling bee, but we didn't have access to any through local channels.

4. There is simply no getting around the fact that some children are doing the same work in a fraction of the time, and getting a fraction of the 'learning opportunity' from that work. This is a placement mismatch, and merely compacting often does little to truly solve it. If the work is already too easy, then compaction isn't a great solution unless you're pairing it WITH another recommended solution (like acceleration).

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We used compaction with radical acceleration, and also with the ability to enrich materials (literature selections), plus with the ability to limit the amount of time invested in that kind of thing on a daily basis (virtual school). Even that has been a struggle because the curriculum is simply meant for NT learners-- it's not deep enough (and worse, it punishes students who know too MUCH too early), and a lot of it winds up feeling like busy-work because of the repetition.

Compaction + acceleration seems to work the best with willing administrators, because it assuages their disquiet about "gaps" and because if a child CAN do it, then it's not as though this is an option that "all the parents" are going to want for their kids, too. But this is only a good solution if you intend to accelerate, and it's only a temporary one, probably, with HG+ learners. Even two grades up, the pace and depth is still constructed with NT learners in mind. Compaction also doesn't solve the problem caused by spiraling curriculum-- the fact is, there's still going to be a lot of time wasted on material that the student already has complete mastery of, and they feel frustrated by not learning-- or worse, they still learn that schooling is about showing what you know, not learning what you do not.


To that last, I'd add that compaction and pretesting is only really a good idea if you have a notion of where your child will top out (currently, of course) and whether or not you're willing to effectively go there in terms of acceleration. It's IMO/IME not a very good idea to spend two years slowly pretesting your child's way through the next five grade levels if s/he isn't learning much along the way-- because it's ultimately still a waste of time, foremost. The other problem is that if +5 grade levels is about where "authentic learning opportunity" overtakes "standard curricular offerings in the classroom" you may be out of luck no matter what, unless you have an administration that is singularly visionary and helpful. I'm told that they do exist. This also assumes that YOU would be okay with a placement like that. I think that most parents begin to have serious misgivings beyond about +2 grade levels out of sync with agemates.