Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy advocating for Math acceleration for 4th grader

My DS will be going into 4th grade next fall. He has been identified for GT program since 2nd grade but it starts in earnest next year so that's something, but we feel like a subject acceleration in math would be very beneficial. He is already working on pre-algebra with ease (we have AoPS textbook at home). His teacher this year has been struggling to find enrichment activities to keep him engaged.

His GT teacher seemed open to the idea of subject acceleration so I thought we had this battle won (although he did mention it could be very hard scheduling between 4th and 5th-grade classes)... But I just received the following from his GT teacher.

"We want to ensure DS is receiving all the necessary foundational skills needed to be successful his math classes in the future. It was concluded by his teachers, Principal and myself that DS would need to score ≥95% on the 4th-grade year-end assessment to be considered for single subject acceleration. We appreciate your concern for DS's academic and social needs."

Doesn't ≥95% seem like a very high mark in order to show proficiency? Does anybody else have experience with this and what proficiency was their benchmark?

I am also a bit nervous because they keep including the word "social" in all of their correspondence. I am afraid this will be another tool they will use to resist subject acceleration.

Any insight or approaches we might take with the school would be greatly appreciated. I can't imagine DS having to sit through all of 4th grade math.

Does your school or school district have published criteria for single subject acceleration? Ours does, and ds had to clear five different hurdles, but at least the process was clear to all in advance.

Hmmmm.... What is the average score for their 4th graders at end of year on that test?

95% seems on the high side but at the same time I would think that if he is doing the AoPS pre-Algebra he should be able to do that without too many problems. The issue might be if he gets a 92%.

I would then respond that I can see that he might have a small gap, but I could not imagine him sitting through an entire year to fill it and instead try to see what he missed to sort if it were careless or a true gap.

We went through a similar exercise with DS and ultimately he ended up doing independent sturdy during his math period and used AoPS. Good Luck!!

Yes, I think an 85% or better is a more reasonable mark to shoot for. I echo sanne's question about the grades that the 4th graders are getting for the same test.

A 95% on a fourth-grade year-end assessment does not seem high for a subject acceleration request. Grade-level year-end assessments tend to be pretty easy. In fact, scoring in the 95th percentile or above of all test-takers would be a fairly typical screening cut-off. A 95% would be high on an above-grade level test which would indicate further acceleration might be necessary.

I think the OP may be referring to 95%, vs 95th %ile.

It does depend on the test. I always assume that at most one person will get 100% and maybe a a few more in the 90s because that is my experience of tests. If it is set in such a way that most kids get 80% plus then 95% is fine but if most kids get 60% then 95% means the kid is accelerating into a class where most kids are still working below them.

Just to be clear. DS is currently in 3rd grade. 95% is referring to what he needs to score on the above grade level end of year 4th-grade math test he will be taking, not the screening tests for admission into the GT program. Those required >97 percentile on TOMAGS - Primary, Slosson, and SAGES - 2 K-5.

I did just get a copy of the district's acceleration policy and the only thing I see that would shed any light on this says.

"Academically the child should demonstrate skill levels consistent

with the average performance level of the students in the grade

desired."

There is no mention of >95%

This echoes sanne's question upthread, as to the average performance on the end-of-4th-grade math assessment.

Unfortunately, as mentioned in this old post, it is not unheard of for schools to create more stringent criteria for students accelerating into a grade, than for students passing into a grade. This could be challenged when advocating for your child. Did you see this post? Possibly with a bit of research, you may locate the source information in Susan Assouline's work and be able to utilize it to advocate for a cut score at 80% rather than 95%.

While I tend to agree with ruazkaz upthread, in saying that a child who has done well studying AoPS ought to do quite well on an end-of-4th-grade math assessment, I would also add that it depends on the quality of the assessment itself. For example, does the assessment check for concepts, strategies, and execution... or might it test for some esoteric knowledge that only a child who has studied a particular curriculum would tend to know?

FWIW, in our district they use 85%, with the understanding that parents/teachers would also look to see if the questions missed showed a gap where the student needed to be caught up before moving forward or if these were just random errors.

Whether a kid is at 80% mastery or 85%, it has been helpful to look for gaps (which can be quickly covered) and then allow him to move forward. In our district, they have given multiple year-end tests at once, to place students. (If he gets > 85% on 4th, they would also give 5th.)

Good luck!

Well, I guess all of my concerns were unfounded thus far. I just heard that DS scored 100% on 4th Gr. end of year test. We have a meeting this week to see where we go from here??

I would hope that includes testing for 5th grade. He seem to have hit the ceiling on their current tests.

Thank you to everyone for their advice...

Thanks for sharing the great news of your child's perfect score.

You may wish to begin a bit of meeting prep, for potential future advocacy.
- Make sure your family is of one mind
- Plan to take notes at your upcoming meeting
- Don't be rushed or pressured into making a decision
- After the meeting send a recap, summary, or letter of understanding, including next steps
- etc...

Congratulations on the testing going well. This situation reminds me of another recent post. If you're 3-4 years ahead of the math sequence, is a 1 or 2 year math acceleration really going to make things much better? I think you're going to find that its still review and that you're still after-schooling. Further, if AOPS is working well, I don't think you'll be able to find a comparable experience in the school system even if you were bold, they were willing and your son was advanced to a class actually at his level. (You're going to probably need Algebra by some time next year based on your posts)

This is a really tough problem but I'd think about more out of the box solutions for the long run. Maybe Math is never going happen in the school, can you find peers in the area, are there extra curricular programs that might work.

Good luck

That's the way I felt about my kid when he was a second grader who really needed 6th grade and beyond language arts instruction. What was a one grade skip or acceleration really going to do for him? And there really is great literature in the 3rd to 5th grade leve that he shouldn't skip over. So I never really pushed much about his language arts needing to be accelerated and just asked for them to really try hard to differentiate and one skip with differentiation worked through elementary. In middle, we had to add another accelleration of two grades (had to get him out of the middle school language arts curriculum altogether) to get to tolerable for him. College level would be the ideal intellectually....but I feel he needs a bit more time for life experience, maturity, and writing experience.

Sometimes there just is too big of a need to even wrap your head around a possible solution and just do the best you can.

Yes, with those results, I would also want to know how far ahead my child was with the 5th and 6th grade tests.

As others are pointing out, if you do find that your DS is several grades ahead, there is this idea that acceleration isn't going to help. I will say that a one year skip *did* help my child in the short term. It definitely made school more interesting and liveable that year. After a year, we could tell that we needed another skip, and after that, we needed another school.

DS just finished 4th and he says the teacher told him they are having him skip another year and he will be doing 9th grade math for high school credit next year. I don't think they have a plan for how this is going to work, but they somehow come up with something each year in the fall. I just wish I would be informed of what they are doing. I don't know why schools are always so worried about the social aspect, like kids are not going to be able to handle it. It's just one class. DS has done just fine in that regard even though he is awkward, and the kids were up to 3 years older.

It depends. If the 9th grade class is an honors class probably not. If it's a regular class it could be a problem. I think honors kids are more accepting of younger kids.

I don't think they'd actually put him with 9th graders, but with other kids that are accelerated. There wouldn't be anyone as young as him, I'm guessing most would be 2 years older. They may also have the middle school teacher come to the elementary and teach him individually.

Our high school and Grade school are different districts. You wouldn't get high school credit unless they attended class at the high school.

I can see this both ways, the student should show that they have mastered the foundation concepts before they move on to the next. However, with these kiddos they learn so quickly that they should be accelerated to their level, but when the teachers are not differentiating their schoolwork, there is no one teaching them those concepts which make it difficult for them to get a 95%. I find for my own kids that I think I am teaching them the advanced math concepts, but there are holes of the concepts that I don't think to teach them. Your son should not have to sit through math that he already knows most of, but he also needs his teachers to teach him those "holes" that no one has taught him before.

We finally met with the school regarding DS's math acceleration. After seeing 100% on the end of 4th gr. test they unanimously agreed to a single subject acceleration next year. This is a good start, I guess. We can always do another acceleration after next year.

We were hoping and in fact asked that with such a high score that they would test with end of 5th year test, as we are sure he would've scored nearly as well. At our meeting they acknowledged that he was a very good "multiple choice" test taker but said that they did not have any tests they would feel comfortable using. ???

They seemed really concerned that in 5th grade there is a lot more writing and explaining your work and that multiple choice tests were not the best tool to evaluate this aspect.

it should be noted that 5th grade is in same school but 6th grade is about 10 minutes away and would involve much more logistics (although this seems inevitable next year)

We said that we just wanted to know where his zone of proximal development actually was and that with a 100% on his testing he clearly hit the ceiling. Wouldn't it be good to do some above grade level testing to find out where he is at?

The administrator said that they would try to find something that would be appropriate over the summer and we would revisit this in the fall.

So my question is, does anybody know a test that they might be able to use? something that would give them a good idea of his actual level of achievement.

We just want the school to be aware of his level of achievement by a measure they would trust. To this point they have not seemed overly anxious to find this out...

Our district pre and post tests each grade's math with tests right from the textbook company (curriculum based assessment) which might include a few explain your answers.

Sometimes it is the exact same test, sometimes there are form A and form b tests.(same skills tested, different numbers in the problems).

Generally speaking, the most direct measure of preparation for SSA is performance on the end-of-course or end-of-grade test from the specific curriculum used by the district. If there is no year-long summative measure (which is not unusual for elementary texts), one could also administer all of the unit tests for that grade, which takes a little more time, but also has the advantage of pinpointing the exact gaps that exist, if there are any. Ideally, one would use this kind of data to inform curriculum compacting for a student who scored well, but did not make the 95% benchmark (although 80 is probably a fairer measure, since most schools consider 70% to be mastery of the standards for NT students). Meeting the benchmark for mastery should mean moving on to the next level for instruction.

Another (much more laborious) option, depending on the state, is to have the student take a previous year's version of the state-wide test in that content area for the relevant grade to be skipped. (In some states, these are released one to two years later.) If the raw score received is at or above the level considered proficient/meets expectations for that particular administration, then they should be able to move to the next grade-level for instruction. Repeat until they no longer score in the "meets expectations" or above range.

"Should" being the operative word, of course.