Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Grade skips and future competitiveness

Okay- so this is one that comes up quite a lot around here.

It certainly seems like a wholly valid concern. Will my HG child still be able to shine--enough/as s/he should-- when it comes time in middle and high school for the outside world to start measuring and assigning achievement percentiles??

Is it going to "cost" my child status which would/should rightfully be his/hers?

This really worries some parents.

Well, I decided to start this thread because similar (or related) conversation comes up a LOT at the beginnings/ends of the school year for fairly obvious reasons.

Pro-skip:
Child needs more appropriate academic setting NOW or is at risk of failure-- ergo the distant future isn't even a consideration.

The skip can be "un-done" at the break between middle and high school if you decide at that point that being 95th percentile isn't "good enough."

Anti-skip:

There is a huge difference between 99th percentile on the SAT/ACT and where that will take a student... versus 90th percentile. If a skip (ideally) moves a child into his/her proximal zone and keeps him/her there-- that 90th percentile SHOULD be about where they score.

For the purposes of college admissions and merit scholarship money, that's simply not good enough unless you happen to qualify for other reasons (minority status, low SES) that make you a desirable diversity admit.

Colleges may NOT be pleased about a 13, 14, 15, 16-yo matriculant, and may in fact want that student to look BETTER than his/her academic peer cohort on paper. (We've recently run into this in a few places.)

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Now, with that said, something that most of us who have done skips have noticed also occurs to me.

Recall that HG+ kids are not just "advanced" they are on a different cognitive trajectory entirely.

If you 'jump' a child like that into an appropriate level of challenge which is still intended for neurotypical peers, the fit isn't going to be ideal for long.

We've discovered that, in fact, when you're dealing with an EG/PG child, a single skip only "helps" for about a year. At most. Then the fit gets bad again. It's like growing a Giant Sequoia in a series of pots intended for begonias and other houseplants.

In our experience you're far more likely to encounter problems in maturity/asynchrony than in performance/challenge-- in the long run, that is.

Why? Because they adjust to the increased demand, sending out rootlets and filling up the pot you put them in until it gets "small" again. Like a Sequoia. What this means, functionally, is that most EG/PG kids, even multiply grade accelerated, are STILL going to be capable of wowing on standardized tests. They still rise to the new boundary condition, basically.

DD13, then a high school junior, scored 99th percentile on both her PSAT and her SAT. Now, it is true that she scored just out of national-merit range. She had a not-so-great day. [shrug] But truthfully, that could have happened to her at 15 or 16, too.


It's definitely a balancing act.

But stop to consider-- really consider-- your child's tolerance for another however-many-years of far-below level work and then ask yourself if your child is still going to be knocking out stratospheric standardized test scores if they've spent the previous decade dumbing down, blending in, and tuning out.

Some kids, maybe so.

Others, not-so-much.

Thanks for starting this thread. It is still a question that comes up for me. I am not really concerned about my child's competitiveness post-skip in his class at his school. I am somewhat concerned about how he does compared to other GT kids who take certain tests or participate in talent searches or competitions. For example, if we had not skipped our son, his Explore tests would have been much more impressive, but since he is compared with others who took the test in his grade, some of whom have not been skipped, there is a difference. My kiddo is just 9 now and doesn't care much if anything about Explore or other tests at this stage, so I'm not really concerned about it that much. But it is something to consider.

Our DD8 made it quickly apparent that the answer to that question was an emphatic "NO!" when, three weeks into K, she decided that she didn't remember how to write an "M" anymore. She'd already been writing on every loose scrap of paper for the previous two years.

DD has skipped into 4th grade this year, and I'm quite delighted that she's not bringing home aces on every paper, because it shows that she's being challenged. I do expect her to rise to the challenge as the year goes on.

Last night she brought home a pile of papers, and one was a writing assignment with a well-deserved F.

If they aren't challenged, they may barely grow.

I don't agree with the conclusion that a kid in a sub-optimal learning situation would do better on say an Explore test at 13, then they would at 12 while having been in a closer to optimal learning situation. Now if they had an extra year in an optimal environment, then sure. But the presumption is we skip because that optimal opportunity doesn't exist.

We have only recently come across a problem that we hadn't anticipated in advance of the grade skip. In math competitions, like Math Olympiad or elementary Math League, DS is competing with other gifted kids. Last year, he would have won an award at the state level for scores as a 5th grader, but because of the skip, he is a 6th grader. So he missed out by two points. As a gifted 5th grader, he still knocked the socks off of the competition. Because some families locally are huge in red shirting, he was competing against kids that were two, sometimes three years older and also gifted.

Yep. We're just now learning about that, first-hand.

We sent DD8 to 4th grade with the advice to keep her age to herself, because nobody would know she was only 8 unless she told them, and we want her to be able to blend in. Her homeroom teacher "outed" her within the first few days... so much for that strategy. DD thinks that led to another girl beginning to bully her. One day when DD was shoved in the hallway, she made an appeal to another teacher standing nearby, who said something to the effect of, "We don't like tattle-tales in fourth grade. If you don't like it, you can go back to third."

Leaving that story incomplete would be a disservice to the school, so, when the situation with that girl escalated to the point where DD felt ready to report it to her parents, I emailed the teachers involved, and the responses were appropriate and consistent with their self-professed policy of zero tolerance for bullying.

But yeah... great attitude, staff.

I guess I want to clarify what I meant by talking about my son's Explore scores. If I look at his scores he got as a grade-skipped 4th grader, but compared them to the 3rd graders who took the test (my son by age should have been a 3rd grader when he took the test), then his scores look a lot better. Of course I can't say that he would have gotten the same scores if he had not skipped in the first place, but who knows.

And unfortunately without running live experiments on our kids or do-over time machines, we don't know. So I'd take the perspective that he got his best score possible in this scenario with the possibility that he might've had a higher percentile ranking if he had been retained but also likely a lower score (whether motivational or simply lack of access to more advanced material.)

I also don't want to fight and embrace ageism at the same time. (Though I am quite certain once DS does some Explore like test, I'll be cross-comparing against age vs. grade.)

That's why I posted about DD, in fact. She was capable of a "perfect" score on under ideal conditions, probably.

She did do VERY well on the SAT-- just not perfect, and not as well as she did on practice exams.

But that could have happened to her regardless of age, honestly. The point is that at 13 she was in that elite category of "potential perfect scorers." Which means that she's in the 99th percentile when compared with 16-19yo's.

Not all of them WILL do it on any given day, either.

Too many other factors, like being tired, nervous, ill, anxious over something else, etc.

I admit to wrestling with this a little, but on a slightly different scale. DS5 is a great skip candidate in almost every way, except that if we skipped him to 1, next year he would go up into a full-day gifted magnet. He would still be ready for this (I know because my DD is in the magnet) except for writing, where he would be quite far down at the low end. It would surely be a struggle for him, and I really do worry that setting a 6yo male second grader up to fear or dislike writing (in an environment where kids are expected to be with the program or...well, not, especially because it is a high-expectations, opt-in program and he has no LDs) is a bad idea.

His K teacher actually even brought up skipping to us (in fact, skipping to a 1/2 multiage, which they have, was her thought) but I said I didn't think it was a good idea because of the writing. She deferred because she teaches gen ed and doesn't know the program, and also said the school principal would likely not support a skip. Now I am wondering--uh, the teacher brought up a skip in the 3rd week of school and I said no? But DS can just kinda write a somewhat legible sentence. His spelling is definitely pretty out there still. Punctuation is usually not there. My dd9 entered 2nd writing beautiful, cohesive paragraphs. She was at the high end, but so were plenty of kids.

If DS5 is writing really nicely at the end of K, then maybe....

Yeah, writing was pretty much the only hard part when my DS skipped 1st. But then again, his writing in K with agemates was also crummy -- he wasn't magically going to get better with or without a skip. We were lucky with an HG program that didn't mind that his writing was poor - they said it was age appropriate. Now in 5th, you can decipher his writing a bit better, but it's still not fabulous. His cursive is better. And if he takes the time to really try, it's fine. Good enough for us. But if you're in a program where they're going to make a big deal about quality and quantity of writing, then it would be a concern.

Yea, DS might be in a 2nd grade HG program rather than skipped to 3rd if the HG program didn't have such comprehensive requirements that included writing.

You make a good point. But I guess in my mind, I'm comparing my grade-skipped kid to the appropriately taught and homeschooled HG kids taking the Explore. More of a "what if we had homeschooled instead of skipped a grade and effectively skipped two grades because we then transferred to an accelerated program?" type thing. Those kids who didn't skip, but are learning the same things as my kid, will achieve a higher score if they are with agemates. But it's just one of those thoughts in the back of my head that I don't give a lot of credit to. It doesn't matter for my family, but I still can't help wondering about it sometimes.

I had a wonderful discussion with CTY about this topic.

Our son (8th grade at the time) missed qualifying for their summer program by just a couple of points when looking at the 8th grade requirements. He qualified handily as a 7th grader and I asked if they would consider that he would really be in 6th grade if we had options other than acceleration.

But the CTY program mgr was a stickler on the grade-level, explaining that as an 8th grader, he had all the additional exposure, etc.

Fortunately, he had unsolicited glowing letters from two former CTY instructors explaining that he was ahead of the curve in their courses so she made an exception for one summer with a requirement that he take additional testing to qualify in the future. He subsequently took the SAT at the end of the year and hit his numbers... so all is good.

BUT.

I read about all the GT kids who, instead of skipping, stay with their age-peers but then get carted all over creation for individual subject acceleration in everything except PE and Pottery. These kids get all the same acceleration in the core subjects (or more) as our son, but continue to be tested along side and compared to their age-peers.

This, to me, is no different than a GT kid in a GT class where his age-peers are all doing Geometry and other above-level work in 7th grade. This is essentially the program I had in school, but is simply not available out here in Podunkia, USA.

So, yes, I can see a disadvantage to the skip, but as I mentioned a couple days ago, I couldn't imagine for a second putting him back two or three grades to be with his age-peers. This just means he's gonna have to work a little harder in the next few years... which was kinda the whole point in skipping him!

HK knows that "future competitiveness" is something I consider . Being skipped a few years may reduce competitiveness in some situations where you compete by grade, but as you get older, you compete by age, and there the grade-skipped person may have an advantage over agemates, since he or she has had more years since school completion to accomplish things. Employers may not ask about age for legal reasons, but they do consider it.

Women (and to a lesser extent men) who finish college early have more years to pursue graduate study or work intensively before the biological clock starts ticking loudly.

Grade skip increases competitiveness because kids need to "prove" themselves in a more competitive environment - especially so for a gifted child who has been coasting all his life because everything came easily to him in academics. And a side effect is the high level of self confidence the success in a more difficult environment instills because the 6 year old has proved to himself that he is as good as an 8 year old.

If a child is not going to be bored out of his wits all day long and will be challenged at school, then I would go for that opportunity. I would be excited and happy for my child and not worry about what the future brings.
One word of caution though - when a gifted kid is grade skipped they are bound to face challenges because they are not used to doing difficult things. More so if they are perfectionists who give up at the first signs of failure. A parent's job is to keep a close eye on the child at those times and gently prod them in the right direction.

Our reality is that DD is still just as academically competitive as ever. Even after a +3 acceleration.

On the other hand, this means that she must work quite hard to be competitive at the other things she does as extracurriculars because many of those (4-H, etc) are grouped by grade, not age.

We feel that this is the right balance for her that way, incidentally-- because piano, dog training, showing animals, sewing, etc. are all things that she REALLY has to work at in order to shine, even a little.

It gives her a chance to tackle challenge in a fairly risk-free way, which is another bonus.

Ultramarina, my DD skipped into first (a 1/2 split in fact) wih hand writing that was mid K at best (very generously). I "hothoused" (or provided OT, depending on perspective) for 10 mins a day at home on school days. 18 months later she's 6 months ahead of grade in handwriting and much more than that in writing. Don't assume a HG child who needs a skip can't brin their deficit up at a speed no-one has ever seen before.

And note that my DDs handwriting issues come from a physical disability that will never be resolved, it should not be physically possible for her to do many of the things she does (write this well, monkey bars, etc), but she's compensating spectacularly well with intellect. So theroretically a child who is simply a bit asynchronous should make at least as much progress, if not more (if well supported).

I also think seeing her peers' higher standard of output (quality and volume) was motivating (they were not all so far ahead she felt defeated though).

Interesting topic and there is not one "right answer" for this one.

None of ours are skipped (nor do I think they should be...not PG). You might call middle kid a red-shirt. When we changed schools we had her repeat 2nd for social/maturity reasons, though she is now in the correct grade for her birthdate (private school had a different birthday cutoff).

I think it may be tough to know if you made the right decision until well after the fact, perhaps not until they go to college. And sometimes you may not know even then...you can't run two scenarios at once with one kid. You'll never know if they would have done better or worse with academic competitions, athletics, etc. if you skip or red-shirt.

With that said, I think that the middle kid outcome is mixed. As far as academics go, probably would have been better for her to go to 3rd in the new school rather than 2nd. However, she knew a lot of kids in 2nd through rec sports. Also, my kids are small and not naturally athletic, so that extra year helped a lot for middle kid. If she was a year ahead, I doubt she would still be playing sports, but she is now in 10th and plays a fall sport and a spring sport...she was really excited to be the only 10th grader to make varsity in her fall sport.

While some may not find sports to be valuable, my kids have gained a lot of good memories and friendships through sports. My kids acknowledge that school has been boring at times but I doubt they would have wanted to skip...but who knows what the outcome would have been if they had skipped.

My bias is remembering what it was like for me and imagining what DS6 would want based on that -- my parents refused skips multiple years, despite my begging for them; I was exceedingly bored; none of my academic awards meant much since I hadn't actually worked for them, although I would have been quite surprised to not receive them... and yet, I was the captain of every team in h.s., lead in musicals, president of everything and those leadership roles definitely shaped who I am. These were things we considered, wondering what would be best.



Yes, this is what we have tried to consider, although I'm not sure we considered it enough. DS skipped from K to 2nd this year, but his performance and achievement and IQ scores are such that if he'd already been in first, they would have supported the skip to 3rd... and I'm feeling like perhaps we failed by not considering this. Another skip may well be in our future, bringing with it new considerations about his future, and if it is needed, I wonder if perhaps it wouldn't have been better to do them both now.

Although, it is informal interactions like the one Dude describes that worry me. Dude, hope DD's year improves!

Two things are true. (1) If your child is ready for more advanced academics you generally should want to accelerate. (2) If your child is put into a higher grade, then it will count against them in some tests and competitions.

I believe that if (2) is the price you have to pay to get appropriate academic acceleration, then it's still worth it. But (hypocritically?) we got the best of both worlds: single subject acceleration in every subject, without whole grade acceleration

We're in a virtual school. DS7 is in grade 2 (standard grade for age), but all his subjects are grades 3 to 6. We could have put him in grade 3, but we decided not to because (a) he can accelerate in each single subject regardless of his "official" grade level, (b) he would be penalized in some tests and competitions (yes, we most definitely considered this and it was a major factor in our decision; we couldn't deprive him of the chance to get the best possible results), and (c) he may not go to college early, to give him the best chance of being competitive at elite universities, so instead he'll accumulate a lot of college credit while in high school.

We are fortunate in that our local gifted program for grade school accelerates by 1-2 grades, so we haven't had to worry about actual grade skips. I interview high school kids for competitive colleges, and they really do look at your test scores, if you are a national merit scholar, that kind of thing. It really helps, if you want to get into a highly competitive college.

Yes I believe here the youngest you can be collecting high school credits are 7th and 8th grade. You can take the classes as younger but no credits. So you could take Algebra as a 6th grader but I think you don't get high school credit. But you would get credit for Geometry in the 7th. I may be wrong but I think that is the rule. My son is getting credits for Algebra and Physical Science in 8th grade. And if his school offered (or he took it online) he could do Spanish I also. There are some technology electives that get high school credit also.

Also, my SIL (mom of a PG son) said that once you get more than 5 HS credits you are considered a tenth grader no matter if you have never set foot in high school, so she didn't let her son take an online class this summer because he had 5 high school credits and she didn't want him to move from 8th grade to 10th grade. (He has an older brother who is in 10th grade and the son in question has already skipped once). She doesn't want them leaving the nest the same year.

Exactly-- the kinds of children who have a need for academics which are 3-5 years beyond their chronological age by adolescence are probably not going to get those needs met well in the long haul WITHOUT radical acceleration in the picture.

It is really about examining "least-worst" in an individual setting.

I think that the assumption that EG/PG kids will be "less competitive" if they've been accelerated may be false to begin with.

We might have worried about it when DD was five or six if we had been thinking about 'elite' college placement, which we were most emphatically NOT--

but it became obvious in the past 18 months that in spite of being 3y young-for-grade, she's STILL competitive at those places.

It's just not a guarantee. Then again, even superstars don't necessarily get any kind of guarantee either, so it's not clear that an additional year or two would have made one bit of difference anyway.

That's actually why I started this thread. I think that it IS entirely possible for a 15yo PG student to go to Harvard, UC Berkeley, MIT, or Caltech.

Our decision-making is revolving NOT around where she might be "good enough" to get in--

but around which kind of environment is better for her as a 15yo.

We're really not wishing that we'd redshirted her (so to speak) so that she'd be a ringer...

So she IS competitive at schools that have 8-20% admission rates. We know this. A few of those with 25-35% acceptance rates have even waived portions of their standard applications for her-- without even knowing her age or seeing her transcripts, but just on the basis of scoring so well on the PSAT (on which, to be clear, she had a not-so-awesome outing).

The question is, should she do that, or attend the local self-contained honors college (which also has something like a 15% acceptance rate) and probably earn one of the 60 "full ride" scholarships there? I'm thinking that that option looks pretty awesome, myself-- because it will allow her to continue being both her chronological and cognitive ages simultaneously.

We're going to watch him this year and see if a skip to 2nd seems right next year. We feel like we really lucked out with this teacher, so that's a huge help. I confess that having a teacher suggest a skip made it seem more like we should really think about it and also a lot more frightening. We had always kind of assumed it was off the table, though I won't say we didn't talk about it. Ironically, it's his sister who is the big skip advocate for him. (She didn't hear it from us! It's her own idea.)

We also do not have any testing on him yet.

... also in the "finances" category, figure out how much savings are realized when your child attends college a year or two SOONER than age-mates.

With college rate hikes at about 3-8% annually, you're actually losing the $$ (in terms of its purchasing power, I mean) that you have set aside in stable, low-risk investments for that child's college education.

For some families who don't qualify for financial aid, that kind of calculation really matters a lot.

You are spelling out exactly our main concerns. Since the virtual school is all K-12 in one school, we are hoping that all high school courses taken while officially in elem/middle school would count for high school credit. There's no reason for this not to happen, but we're definitely going to pin this down with the school as this is going to come up soon. As for college courses, they would be taken at the local State Uni and should certainly get credit towards a BSc for that Uni (and may be transferable to other Unis) and should not be needed for high school credit.