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.