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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 84
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 84 |
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. Recall that HG+ kids are not just "advanced" they are on a different cognitive trajectory entirely. 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!
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Joined: Feb 2013
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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.
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Joined: Jan 2010
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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.
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Joined: Jun 2011
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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.
...reading is pleasure, not just something teachers make you do in school.~B. Cleary
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Joined: Feb 2011
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Joined: Feb 2011
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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.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,428
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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. 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.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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... 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.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Feb 2013
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But (hypocritically?) we got the best of both worlds: single subject acceleration in every subject, without whole grade acceleration I would throw in a caution about this though. You will likely run into problems down the road if your child's base grade level and subject levels are too far apart. While not an issue in lower grades,it can become a problem at the high school and above level. At the high school level, some schools won't give high school credit for classes taken before high school (9th). For example, that could mean that you child may have finished all the high school math classes available prior to actually being in 9th. If he/she needs 4 math credits to graduate high school then you will have to turn to college classes. But then you could run into a problem in that a lot of colleges have minimum age or grade levels for enrollment and your child might not yet be eligible. None of these problems are insurmountable but they are obstacles that you will have to work around. Also, there comes a point of diminishing returns so to speak. Your child might reach the point where he/she is taking all college courses. At some point you might want those courses (and the money spent to accumulate them) to go toward an actual bachelor's degree rather that a high school diploma. And what happens if your child completes a bachelors degree requirements but has not yet graduated high school? He/she might have to start his/her undergrad taking graduate classes. The kind of college you might want to attend for undergrad might not be the one you want to attend for grad school. You might dream of going to Caltech as an undergrad, but if you plan to pursue a PhD in pure math with an emphasis in topology that might not be your first choice if you are taking classes at the graduate level. Again, all of these obstacles can be overcome with creativity, but just keep in mind that what works for 2nd grade might not carry through to college. 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.
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