My biggest issues with whole grade acceleration is that it doesn't seem to address the problem. Unless I'm willing to send my kid to college at 10 or 11, I can't imagine any skip will actually help us much. They subject accelerated multiple grades this year and there's no way that provides sufficient challenge. I'm not sending my 6 yo to middle school, but unless I do that, just a "token" skip or two wouldn't seem to help us much (but would cause family issues.)
I've decided that the best solution is a self-contained program that will let the kids work at their own level while technically remaining at their grade level. I'm hoping to find such a program for my kids next year, although I think there are only a few nationally that would work and now I'm actually considering moving to one of those locations. Then at times, I think I'm crazy to be thinking school issues are this important.
J
Jill,
I tend to agree with you that a gradeskip is sort of a least worst option, and for my family configuration much easier to swallow than your situation! I would love a self contain classroom, or school, particularly if it allowed the children to mix with a heterogenious grouping for art and gym, but have grouping for academics - particularly if the groupings were really individualized so that where a child was with handwriting didn't effect where they were with reading.
For us, moving wasn't an option, but I am very excited for you. Also, there is a difference between trying to prevent problems and trying to recover from problems. In our situation there was a core of fear and sadness that a school switch and a grade skip really seemed to help. Of course, personality and level of gifteness make a big difference. I'm thinking that my son is more similar to your DS2 in level of giftedness, so that a single skip into the richer ground of Middle School, with group acceleration in Math, plus every extracurricular activity one can find seems to be a better fit than where he was. Personality wise, a boy with that "I'll show you" gleam in his eye, like my DS11, just wasn't going to tolerate not learning anything in school.
So, it varies, but yes, there could be much, much better than gradeskips for our little ones. One room school house comes to mind.
Smiles,
Trinity
