Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Allow DS to move forward or try to hold him back?

Good question-- also-- does your state/school district SPECIFY particular math coursework for a high school diploma?

Ours does. Even if yours doesn't, I'd have this convo with someone specifically, because if it CHANGES before your child is assigned a high school cohort year, then they may all be in a position where the only reasonable solution is for the student to retake the course. ( )

So regardless of other grade placement, DD9 had to get credit for Algebra I as a high school course... or... she'd get to take it again IN high school.

DD is also not an especially mathy kid. I'd call her natural skill set "verbal" in fact. She took a year off of school mathematics when she was 13. The other things that we've done with her include peer tutoring math, which I highly recommend for kids who are both prosocial and interactively driven. It was very helpful in terms of refreshing all that earlier math that she needed to be sharp on for the SAT/ACT, too.

It was not my intention to imply that language arts do not require acceleration ever. Clearly, your DD really wanted it and should have had it. My point was that for DS, he did so much reading (up to adult level) outside of the two-hour reading/language arts block (and actually also during his free-time within the two-hour reading/language arts block), that it really wasn't a great hardship to read only slightly accelerated but interest-level appropriate literature during that time slot. There is a huge emphasis on literary analysis and have been since first grade. The writing was open-ended enough for him because even though he writes well, he is not PG-level writing-wise. Part of it is personality and perhaps maturity as well. Even my DD, who is a prolific writer and artist, doesn't want formal instructions in those domains.

How about each time he completes the regular online course, follow it up with the corresponding AOPS course.

That is a good question and the answer may well change with implementation of common core. Thankfully, more than half the student body takes Algebra before high school and the district has routinely provided high school credit. In addition, there is the state proficiency test for Algebra so it would look foolish indeed for any insistence on repeating the course.

AOPS is great, but unfortunately it requires "class-time" at night, which would be punishing, particularly during the school year.

I just had a big crisis along these lines when I realized my previous plan of just having DD work ahead as much as she wanted might end up in her repeating a bunch of stuff. I had optimistically thought that we would be able to get her into a school where they would let us do independent study, but I'm now starting to believe that will not be the case and she will be expected to lock-step with the standard curriculum (so even having to re-do pre-algebra before she even gets back to repeating algebra). A local education expert advised that I call the math departments of the schools we were thinking about for middle school to ask them whether acceleration/ independent study were acceptable, because as he pointed out you can probably take their word for what they will do. Excellent idea, I thought--only flaw is they're not calling me back. Did I just become one of 'those parents' by politely asking the question? Heaven forbid. I'm choosing to assume that if DD gets into their school they might return my call, but maybe they won't. And for the private schools there's a test ($) and a length application and an application fee ($$)--so it would be nice to know what to expect before we go through all that.

I am going to think hard about this too and probably try to refocus on the parallel route--we just started AoPS and Alcumus and DD loves it. She's working on Intro to Probability and Counting independently at her current school and I may try to look for another parallel outside thing to work on at home rather than continuing with the AoPS algebra--but it is very disappointing to basically be holding her back. Hopefully though she won't lose her love of math by having to do things this way.

And just as an aside--we only do math at home when she doesn't have another afterschool activity; this works for now because she doesn't have homework. I suppose things will slow down even more once she starts getting homework, but as long as she's happy and learning *something* I guess that's enough.

Just a thought. You may never get a reliable answer from the middle school even if they call you back. For us, the approval had to come from the District office (both the GT office and office of Mathematics). Of course, the school has to be willing to cooperate as well. The private school may be a bit easier if you can talk to current parents to see whether their kids have noticed any accelerated students.