A better approach would be to focus on kids who are at least 1 standard deviation above the mean (16% of the population). On top of this group would be kids who don't meet this criteria but who clearly excel in one or more areas.
Most or all of the children in this larger group would benefit from acceleration to whatever degree would be appropriate. In light of accelerating many kids in one or more subjects, accelerating a very few by a whole grade or more would not seem so weird anymore.
We do this with athletes all the time when we accelerate them to the varsity team at a young age. No one thinks it's odd if some 13-year-old who can run 400 meters in 53 seconds races against (and beats) high school seniors. No one tells her to stop running while others catch up. We just cheer.
Val
I'm cheering for you Val! This clearly would create a wonderful atmousphere, except when schools use it to say - we have a program and it works for every kid except yours. How can you tell us that your child is still bored with a single grade subject acceleration? And what about the kids who are reading at High School Level but writing at agemate level?
So I love this approach as one fabulous crayon in the box, but still want schools to have a whole palate of options to use flexibly for individual children,KWIM? I would add to this great idea a few others:
A nationally recognised online educational program that is free, universally accepted, and totally 'go at your own pace.'
Self contained classrooms where PG kids can learn with other PG agemates.
Generous use of cheap accomidations to let kids with LDs and bottlenecks fly!
One room school house classrooms where the teacher can teach the same unit to kids who are abstract thinking on the same level, but have different 'output' abilities based on physical maturity. So a High School teacher might teach the novel 'The Giver' to 'smart' 9th graders, and grant a 9th-grade grades to the folks who write 10 page papers at the ninth grade level, and 5th-grade grades to younger folks who are only able to write 10 paragraph papers at the 5th grade level.
And I'm sure there are more inexpensive ways to fill up that crayon box!
