Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Questions about grade skipping and IAS.

I'm hoping to get in contact with other parents who have used the Iowa Acceleration Scale to assist with grade skipping their child. Here are my questions....

1. Where do you get a copy of the IAS? I noticed Amazon sells the manual but I couldn't find the forms.
2. Are educators, in general, familiar with this assessment tool or will I most likely be introducing something new to his school?
3. Has anyone successfully grade skipped their child using the IAS? Stories and anecdotes are welcome.

I have a stack of articles I printed from a link from another post to give to his teacher. If I can get her on board with it, it will be easier to go to the principal. My DS5 is in K this year and ,with an August birthday, is already one of the youngest in his class. Now it's the end of the year and he is so beyond it I think 2nd grade would be perfect. I really like the idea of the IAS though, because of the analytical approach that takes into account more than just academics.
Thanks,
Eleanor05

1) I ordered the IAS from Great Potential Press http://www.giftedbooks.com/productdetails.asp?id=92 This is the second edition. If you're using the CoGAT you'll need the 3rd edition. But I checked it out from our library first and made sure that it was what I wanted.

2) I don't think most educators are familiar with it. However, when I put it on the table in our meeting our Principal said "Oh, you've seen the IAS." Which put an immediate halt to the discussion over social issues and skips being a bad idea. I don't know exactly why he was willing to debate until I pulled out the IAS. But he was clearly familiar with it.

3) My son did a mid-year skip from 1st to 2nd. He easily could have started the year in 2nd, skipping 1st altogether. But since he was starting at a new school, we didn't know what to expect or how 1st grade would be.

For us, the best weapon was his teacher. She was intensely focused on the idea that DS should not be in her 1st grade class and that she was doing him a huge disservice having him in there daily. I didn't need to present her with any research. We just had a very frank conversation and I asked her how she would be able to differentiate more. When we started talking, I realized that she was totally overwhelmed. I said "Do you think he'd be better served in 2nd grade?" and she just about fell apart with joy that I'd suggested it. She thought I was against the idea!

From meeting with the principal, district psychologist and his teacher to the skip being implemented- 2 weeks.

So the moral I guess is, sometimes there isn't a battle where you think there will be!

Yes, I ordered the manual and the school already had the forms. Skipping dd a grade was suggested by the school, so I'd say that convincing us as the parents was more the challenge than convincing the school in our instance, though.

My dd has a fall bd, so she was one of the youngest already as well. She skipped 5th grade so she is now an 11 y/o 7th grader and doing well.

I'd say that we've found GT coordinators and school administrators in general to be familiar with the IAS but teachers who don't routinely work with GT populations may not be as familiar with it.

We ordered our copy from Barns and Nobles (because we had a gift certificate). It is kind of expensive. If your library has it (or available through inter-library loan), definitely borrow it first.

For the 3rd edition, there are no blank forms in the IAS manual. However, there are three examples with forms filled out for each example. We made a copy of one example, white-out the responses, and filled in with our information just to see if DD might be a good candidate.

When we spoke with school recently, the district's GT coordinator did bring up the IAS and I do believe our school does have the blank forms if needed.

If all you need is the blank forms, consider asking your school's GT teacher. Personally, I thought reading the whole manual offered a better understanding (not to mentions some great references) of the big picture on grade-acceleration.

Hope this helps,
Mag

Thank you all very much. I doubt I'll get much resistance from the school because acceleration is the least expensive and least inconvenient way to help our son, I think. I live in an area with no GT at all, mandated or funded. I'm going to check the manual out of the library and get the forms from the link above. I'll keep you posted!

Interesting! I couldn't help giggling at this bit, where I really think what they say is not what they mean:

SECTION II: CRITICAL ITEMS (If any of the items marked below are marked No,
whole grade acceleration is not recommended).
[...]
2. The student would be accelerated into the same grade as (or a higher grade than) a
sibling. Yes No
3. The student presently has a sibling in the same grade. Yes No

LOL! oops.

This is great! Our psychologist is going to be doing this for my dd as soon as explore test results are in.
But looking over it, I want some opinions.
1.First, would I use FSIQ or GAI. The psychologist says that the GAI should be used for all educational purposes. She has a slow processing speed which really drops her FSIQ.

2.School & academic factors- Grade placement under consideration.
Choices are either
Accerleration would result in a change in building at the beginning of the first semester of the academic year OR
Acceleration would be within the same school building during academic year.
She would be going to middle school next year anyway but if skipped would go to 7th instead of 6th. How would you answer?

3. School activities- Would you count the talent search?


Thanks.

Does anyone have any issues with the motivation/attitude towards learning sections? I would think that one of the reasons for acceleration is that the current level of academics is not challenging enough to promote motivation etc. yet this will dramatically reduce the points allotted.

Just a thought...

There was a lot of subjectivity related to questions like that in our experience. If dd's 3rd grade teachers or school had ranked her social interactions, attitude, etc, she would have come out much worse than she did when her 4th grade teacher did the ranking. He liked her a lot more.

In re to your question, though, yes dd was a procrastinator and I can't say that I thought that she was doing her best work or displaying high motivation or great attitude. However, her teacher who filled it out was comparing her to avg students and still felt that she did high quality work and had a good attitude b/c she wasn't surly and turned everything in on time even if she did it all at the last minute. She was also getting A+s so he saw the work as high quality & didn't think that she was procrastinating or displaying a poor attitude as a result.

Well, I have been filling this out and being very conservative. For example, giving the school "0", using FSIQ instead of GAI, etc. and I still come up with 51 -good candidate.
I hope the explore results are good. But I can definately see where there is alot of subjectivity. The school administration has refused a skip before due to "social". She does not lack interpersonal skills but tells the pychologist that she has nothing in common with her same age classmates and that she is tired of comming down to their level if she wants to interact or play. She prefers older kids. The school thinks because she doesn't have a "best friend" in her class that she lacks social skills. Hmmm. Luckily the teacher is really pushing for the skip.

The first time we entertained a grade skip ourselves was when dd#1 was in 3rd grade and we had the same "0" for the school support. Dd still came out about two points below excellent candidate. The school still said "no," b/c, in the principal's personal opinion grade skips were disasterous. The next year, at a different school, it was suggested to us by the middle school and she did skip with good results. Having the school administration opposed to the skip is a hard piece even if the teachers are in support, unfortunately.

[quote=Cricket2 Having the school administration opposed to the skip is a hard piece even if the teachers are in support, unfortunately. [/quote]

Well, I am hopeful because the psychologist that the school recommended me take her too is also pushing for this and he is the one that suggested doing the IAS and then meeting with the school. However, in the meantime, her current teacher, who is the most experienced at the school with 40+ years of which 15 were in an inclusive gifted classroom, has already gone to administration and recommended a skip. Admin called me last week requesting a meeting to discuss options for next year. Hopefully this is a good sign. I stalled a little telling them I had a few things to gather that I want to bring to the meeting. Hopefully, the explore results will come soon so we can finish and take the IAS.
Thanks.

That does sound better than the situation we were in when dd was a 3rd grader. We did have her teacher, the 4th grade teacher whose class she was in for literacy, and a psychologist in support of the skip, but the administration was not only against it, they were completely unwilling to discuss it. The psych was also of our choosing, not someone they recommended we bring her to.

Good luck!

I ordered the 3rd edition thu am@zon and literally got in a a matter of days. I presented it to the school because I was prepared for the whole "we've never done this, socially.....blah blah blah" but to my surprise, the borroed the manual, bought several more copies to pass around to other faculty and then I gavge them the link to order the forms (thru the publisher) and we are on our way to moving fwd! They were not familiar with the book until I showed it to them though and really liked that it was all research backed. We actually got an answer before we went through the whole form because we had been so prepared and presented the information we had researched and the book just really help lay the ground work for people for the future as they are now putting the "process" together of what needs to be done. So... all our hard work will help others in the future (though we are the guinea pigs .)

HOLY TYPO CITY! SORRY! I was trying to multi task and it didn't help

We used this to successfully skip our son from 1st to 2nd mid year, and our DD DYS from 4th to 6th full year. In both cases the school purchased the IAS and did all the administration of it. We attended the follow on meetings to discuss it. We'd never heard of it before the school brought it up and we were the very first two children in the district to use it.

It seems to me that a kid could lose 7 points in the motivation section. If the child has a very high IQ, then they could afford to lose those points easily. If the child is more optimally gifted (WAS moderately gifted) and they might really need those 7 points, then they have less of an excuse for having such a very bad attitude. (That's why we're calling it optimally gifted, yes?)

Does this seem reasonable?

Grinity

My son was accelerated using the scale (his elementary school used it to assess him). The thing the school wasn't certain on was the outside participation. Luckily, his kindergarten teacher at the time knew him from the baseball field as well.

Hello everyone -

I had to remove the links to the IAS article in this thread, as we were informed that it was in violation of copyright infringement (not at fault of anyone on this board, it was in the public domain). The school board that linked it likely will have to take it down. Anyway, as linked in the first post on this thread, it is available here: http://www.giftedbooks.com/productdetails.asp?id=92.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

Mark