Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy I'm making myself crazy!

DD7 just finished first grade, and (a week before school was out) asked to be accelerated to third grade. We're agreeable to that, and her first-grade teacher was also agreeable to that, and suggested we do a "bridge" workbook over the summer to fill in any gaps she has.

Our state has a mandate requiring acceleration (or similar accomodation) upon demonstration of proficiency. "Proficiency" is a score of 90% or higher on a test that's keyed to the state instructional standards for that subject, in that grade. It's my understanding that our local district interprets the mandate as "you have to pass all the subject exams to skip a grade; if you only pass some, you're stuck with subject acceleration as the only accomodation we'll offer."

Going into first, I could look at the math standards by quarter, for instance, and she knew the first 3 quarters of first grade math before the year started. Not necessarily solidly, but well enough she didn't need a year of repetition. At the end of first, she knows the material through the first half of 3rd grade about that well. She's ahead enough to be thoroughly bored, but not ahead enough that passing the assessment is a no-brainer.

And that's making me nutso. I'm concerned that she'll miss one subject's cutoff by a small amount, because the exam asked about things she'd never heard of, but would have understood after even a small amount of exposure. If that happened, I don't think we'd agree to subject acceleration. Heck, I don't think we'd agree to subject acceleration if DD passed only one of the 4 subjects. DD wants "to be in a class where I'm in the middle" (in every respect - the only thing she's said she would worry about if accelerated was whether she'd be the shortest kid), and subject acceleration (IME) would make her extremely conspicuous.

OTOH, IMHO DD would be bored and unhappy as a public school 2nd grader.

I feel like I need a backup plan, and all of the plans I can come up with are lousy ones. The testing is July 28th-29th, and school starts August 12th. So there wouldn't be much time to get a backup plan into place once the testing is done.

The options I can think of are:
- Homeschool. DD is vaguely in favor of this (and has requested it from time to time), but she really enjoys the social aspects of school, and both of her parents a) work full-time and b) are anti-social hermits who never see any people other than immediate family and unavoidable co-workers. Plus, I (who would be the homeschool parent should we do such a thing) have a hugely seasonal job, and need school as full-time child care January through April.

- Local Gifted School. We did the tour for the 3yo program when we were looking at preschools, and hated it. The parent leading the tour had a 4.5yo who was in the 3yo room for the second year in a row, having been asked by the school to repeat it. The 4yo room was dead silent, full of tiny kids at individual desks, doing Kumon worksheets. They warned that children who entered in kindergarten would already be so far behind that they wouldn't be able to catch up. (This same school has what appears to be an excellent 5th-8th grade program, which offers scholarships to bring in kids from public schools, who, oddly enough, have no trouble catching up. If we were talking middle school, I'd have far fewer concerns.) I suspect DD would have no trouble catching up to their 2nd graders, but that it would be far more regimented / homework-oriented / "gifted means give them more work!" than we could tolerate. It would also mean ~90 minutes a day of commute for DD, and 2.5 hours of commute for me. (Public school is <1hr total of bus for her, and 30 minutes of work commute for me.)

- Multi-age classroom private school. Which would be the same place she went to preschool, and would be a 2nd/3rd mixed-grade class. I suspect they'd be willing to put her in 4th after a year, if the teacher thought she was ready, without any testing. This is another 90 min / 2.5 hours commute situation - if they weren't on the far side of town from us, it would be our first choice. But when she was a preschooler, the driving around was burdensome enough that we had a SAHP purely to accommodate the transportation. (Plus I figured it added 50% to the tuition cost in gas and tolls - and we can't swing the tuition, let alone tuition + transportation, without two incomes.)

There have got to be more choices available to me - I just can't see them. Anyone BTDT and have ideas?

Would you consider moving closer to a school?

AlexsMom, I just want to make sure that I understand something you mentioned about the grade acceleration.

The way you explained it sounds like the requirement is to show 90% proficiency in all 3rd grade subjects in order to accelerate to 3rd grade. That seems pretty counter-intuitive to me, but I do understand that is exactly how some public school systems work. Wouldn't she need to show 90% mastery of all the 2nd grade subjects to accelerate to 3rd grade?

To be honest if your DD (or any other child) could demonstrate 90% mastery of all 3rd grade subjects, why would she need to sit through 3rd grade at all?

My other comment would be - even if the proficiency standard is 90% mastery for 2nd grade material, for acceleration to 3rd grade, what is the normal promotion/progression standard for 2nd to 3rd grade - I'm willing to bet that it's not 90% mastery.

From what you described, I'm not sure that even if you get your first choice (acceleration to 3rd grade) that it will help your situation much. Your DD is not likely to be 'in the middle' of a 3rd grade class if she meets these mastery requirements to be accelerated.

Second grade is still a fairly flexible grade. Third is the worst since they are tested for the first time. Look into how third grade works at your school. Many just focus on the standardized tests. This is when many students begin disliking school.

If you can work second grade to let him excel - especially in writing and then skip to fourth, I'd do it. Often teachers 'get' to teach second and newbies 'have' to teach third.

My daughter spends three month of the year testing and she scores very high. In seventh grade, she began having anxiety over the tests - bad attacks. I think she wants to do so well on them that she makes herself sick. We do not push her. She went down 5 points in English in seventh (although she scored at a twelfth grade level) and she really got upset.

Our public school has the same 90% requirement to skip a grade. About a week after my son turned six, he took his school's test to see if he could skip first grade. I overheard some of the questions on the test and there was something on it that was not even taught at our school until third grade--I asked my son's public schooled friends about it. At that time he was reading well at a 5th grade level. He loved BrainQuest cards and was doing the 3rd grade level at the time he was tested because he had already gone through the lower level cards. I was not allowed to see the test my son took but I was told my son made what would have normally been a passing score had he gone through first grade, but not 90%. I called our Dept. of Education's gifted ed department and was told they didn't have any control over the tests that were used to determine if a child could skip a grade. I also told the state's gifted ed. department about the tester's recommendation that we homeschool and that the principal and a first grade teacher had also recommended it. She told me she agreed with the homeschooling recommendation and that "my child was worth it." I also wanted more choices. I was very shy and I wanted my son to have lots of friends at school. I loved helping out at the school. I liked being around the teachers and I had made a few friends there. It felt like I was being kicked out of school too and we had done nothing wrong. My son just wanted to learn. He called the school the rudimentary elementary because all they wanted to let him learn was rudimentary skills like coloring in the lines, which he had difficulty with because of a mild disability.

So I had no choice but to homeschool. I thought I would give it a try for one year, but after that year he was even further ahead academically and he still wouldn't color in the lines and they made the kids do a lot of coloring at his school. So here we are six years later, still wishing I had choices, but realizing that we are very lucky that we are able to homeschool. Maybe you could try joining a homeschool group? Maybe you could find a homeschool family that your daughter could stay with when you work?

Welcome AlexsMom :-)

First try not to make yourself crazy... the fact that your DD's current teacher thinks accelerating her is a good idea is surely some indication that she's likely to pass the proficiency tests (which are on 2nd grade material, not 3rd grade, right?) Certainly practising any weaker areas between now and the test seems like a reasonable idea, given that you're clear 2nd grade isn't the place for her and that she will be fine in 3rd.

It's crossing a bridge before you come to it, but I'd suggest caution on this:
If that happened, she simply wouldn't have an option (in her current school at least) of being in a class where she'd be in the middle; you'd be choosing between different compromises. Being conspicuous by leaving one class to go to another might be a good swap, if it resulted in her not feeling conspicious in the class where she was being taught.

(Also, I'm admittedly at sea with US bureaucracy and sometimes it does seem bizarrely rule-bound, but supposing she passed at the 95% level in 3 subjects and only at the 87% level in the fourth. Would the school really not find a way to accelerate her if they knew that the alternative was having to manage subject acceleration in 3 subjects? If OTOH you had said you wouldn't accept subject acceleration, they would then have an easy option, just let her be in 2nd. I'd be inclined not to indicate to them that they might have that easy option, anyway.)

Thanks everyone!

onthegomom: There would have to be a long-term issue for moving to be on the table. Other than me borrowing trouble, we have been really happy with our public school, and would prefer DD to be there in the long run. From a pure financial standpoint, we'd be better off with me quitting my job for a year than we would moving across town. Neither the gifted school nor the other private school have bus transportation, and they're both far from where we work, so there would still be logistical issues. (That helps, though. "This situation is not something worth moving over," and "I could quit my job for a year if I had to" are exactly the kind of thoughts I need to be prodded into.

Prissy: Sorry, it's the 2nd grade standards she needs to pass. The standards are minimums, not curriculum guides, which is one reason why many of the 2nd grade standards are things DD learned in first. For example, the highest math on the 2nd grade standards is 2-digit subtraction with borrowing. Which DD can do (and she understands the logic behind it, rather than just knowing the technique), but she still does subtraction on her fingers. If she knew her subtraction facts cold, I think she'd be bored with 3rd grade math. As is, it would give her more interesting problems to work while she solidifies basic skills.

master of none: I am trying to fill in the gaps, but I am not 100% sure what gaps to fill. There are sample tests for the 3rd grade standards (because the proficiency tests use the same guidelines as the end-of-year standardized testing), but not for 2nd, and the 61 pages of 2nd grade standards are less helpful than you'd think 61 pages would be.

Ellipses: In our area, as far as we can tell, the odd-numbered grades tend to introduce more new topics, and the even grades seem to cover details of those same areas. So third starts cursive and multiplication, for instance, and has a reputation for being a bad year to skip. I hear you on the testing, though. I had to swap out a truthful form for an untruthful one in kindy, because the truthful form ("multiple languages are spoken in our house") would have meant standardized testing starting in kindy, rather than first.

Lori, we're in the same state, and that's exactly the kind of situation I'm concerned about - and my DD isn't as far ahead in math as your son was. The impression I got when I spoke to the PBP coordinator last year (when we contemplated subject acceleration in reading, having assumed that if there was a comprehensive program in place that there would be a significant number of kids using it, so it wouldn't be conspicuous) was that elementary kids weren't encouraged to take the test, and weren't expected to pass. We aren't dealing with disabilities, but that have already had the "We're going to designate your kid as being in a group that gets handled separately for NCLB testing, which means she's entitled to accommodations. But she's not behind, so we won't provide any accommodations, just more testing so we can prove what a good job we're doing meeting her needs!" frustrating discussion. Ugh. I've tried to find a secular homeschool group in our area (near Tulsa), but have had no luck.

Hello, ColinsMum! Thanks for the pointer here. Second and third graders here are with the same kids all day long, for all subjects, so the switching between classes would be an everyday conspicuousness. She's really desperate to be a sheeple next year. I personally can't imagine a 3-subject pullout, but I can see it being used as a "just be a 2nd grader" stick.

That is what I heard when I read your post.


One of my accelerations was in a rural district. I started in a pullout to another grade and when I fit in, they moved me after the break. I fit in better with the older kids. You may want to "rock soup" your way into the situation.



It will be hard to find a secular HS group near Tulsa...

BUT... There used to be a very strong HS group with PG kids associated with the professors at ORU. I know a woman who was HS and who graduated from Oral Roberts (ORU) when she was 19 having started college at age 15. She was very flexible intellectually as were her friends from the HS group.

I think you just have to find the right HS group with a mix of PG kids. The faculty association might be able to help you here.

I asked last year about mid-year acceleration (because I anticipated boredom halfway through first-grade, but that a full-year acceleration wouldn't have been appropriate), and they said it absolutely was not an option. Even if she were clearly ready, even if all the teachers agreed. You get two testing opportunities a year, with any acceleration at the beginning of the next year. And there's no deceleration possibility, so if subject acceleration became a social issue in the future, you'd still be locked into it.


We're a 2-mom family. I will not permit my 7yo to be exposed to the belief system associated with ORU, even if it were an ideal learning opportunity for her. (Not a Christianity issue - DD is in YMCA camp for the summer, after I specifically asked whether they would have an issue with our family and they said no. ORU is hugely, hugely anti-gay.)

TU staff would be a better fit, but because of the school there, I suspect they don't attract HSers.


As a side note, I personally do not consider her PG. I'd guess maybe 3 SD out.

I know you don't want to do subject acceleration, but perhaps, if your DD's testing shows that she's advanced in most areas but not all, when you sit down to "discuss" multi-subject acceleration, they will see that logistically whole-grade acceleration would just be easier. I would at least consider meeting with the school if your DD doesn't pass all the sections at 90% and see if this reality occurs to them. If they still don't see the logic of a full-grade acceleration, then you tried and then you can consider your other options. Since you say you really like the school in general it might be worth a shot.

As far as what a 2nd grade test might include, I found that most topics of 2nd grade were introduced in 1st grade and then were just solidified in 2nd grade. Some topics my DC hadn't yet been exposed to when they took the end-of-2nd grade test before subject accelerations were rounding, a.m./p.m, and things like how many days in a year, how many inches in a yard, how many feet in a mile, etc. They had just never come up in our lives to that point so we didn't ever talk with them about it. Luckily, the school just saw these as small holes that they could fill in quickly, and in fact just taking the test made them curious about these topics. But, like I said, in our district it seems that math topics were introduced in 1st and reinforced in 2nd, and then 3rd began introducing new topics again. In fact, thinking about the entire curriculum -- not just math -- this pattern seems to be true. Does this seem to be the way it is in your district?

I agree, too, that you should look at what the standard proficiency level is at your school for kids leaving 2nd. Sometimes schools want kids to still be in the top 90% of students in the higher grade, but I agree with your DD that sometimes it can be good for a child to be average. For a little bit, anyway, until their faster learning pace moves them quickly back to the top of the pack again!

I think we get an automatic meeting once the testing is done, regardless of the outcome.


Yes, exactly! Looking at the standards, even-grade skips seem to make more sense than odd-grade skips.

Alexsmom,

Sent you a PM. It's the flashing envelope at the top.

As a side note on your side note, PG means a lot of different things to different people. On a modern IQ test such as the WISCIV or SB-5 3SD out means an IQ of 145, and that is exactly the cut-off that the Davidson Institute, with which this forum is associated, uses to define PG (the population they aim to serve). Some people use a higher cut-off, but given how unreliable the tests are at and above this kind of level, theirs makes some kind of sense. Lots more about this at Hoagies. But in that sense the "PG" label might well fit your DD. (Sorry ;-)

LOL! To rephrase, I'd call her "about as smart as I am, likely not frighteningly more so, and certainly not significantly less so" and I don't consider *myself* PG. It's been 20 years since I had an IQ test (no clue which one), and I think the scoring at the high ends is different now than it used to be.

So much of the crazy-making of this is wrapped up in my own atrocious subject acceleration experience in math, where the teacher whose class I was accelerated out of resented the acceleration and publicly mocked any errors I made, and the teacher whose class I was accelerated into said "Well, if you're that smart, you can do the the class work and homework for the 3 weeks of material we've already covered, on top of the work we're just starting."

There used to be ratio IQs, i.e. something that really pretended to be telling you that a 10yo with an IQ of 125 had a mental age of 12.5; the effect of this was to make scores over 200 not unheard of. I don't know when the switch over happened, but I think that's the big difference. FWIW I've never had a "real" IQ test, but I remember being told things like that my school only took people with IQs over 130, whereas it certainly was nothing like as selective as that would suggest now, so I guess that was old-style.
Gah. Yes, we all carry our baggage. Mine is about my lack of any kind of acceleration, and being pressurised into neurotic perfectionism instead of being exposed to things I might fail at. Hang around here and you'll meet lots of people working to overcome lots of different personal baggage; I find the variety of it very helpful.

Yes, exactly! I think it's really important for DS to be exposed to challenging problems and have the experience of tackling things he can't quite do, but the line between failing to give him that and putting him off by pushing him to do things he's not ready for is tricky to walk. I tell myself that the one thing I can promise is really to take the issue seriously and do my best.

Ouch! FWIW, my dd11 was subject accelerated in 3rd grade with a much, much better experience than that. She changed schools in 4th and just went to the TAG class for reading only (that was all they offered) that year which wasn't nearly as good of a fit although we loved the teacher. She then wound up skipping 5th.

You just need to move to Colorado b/c I need more people like you and your kiddo to get my very secular homeschool cooperative for gifted kids off the ground -- lol!

It does sound likely that your dd stands a good chance of doing well on the testing, but I really hate such high stakes testing. It causes a lot of unneccesary anxiety. You are wise to try to have a back up plan in place in case they don't approve the skip, but the private school commute doesn't sound like a viable option. I'm not coming up with any better options than those you've already listed. You might want to consider staying with 2nd with a good teacher who is willing to make accommodations for her in the classroom and then trying again for the skip the next year if it doesn't work out this year.

My own experience was to constantly be labeled a "bad" kid, because I didn't do my homework. And that was the rationale used to keep me out of programs that might have benefited me. In my case I think my parents were more to blame than the school - why weren't they supervising a 3rd grader's homework?! That experience and this board have made me determined not to let my sons' relatively poor writing skills hold them back from other educational opportunities.

These experiences are WHY we know what's best for our kids. I'm not stressing over making a bad choice for my kids, cause I've been there, done some of it. Most of their teachers haven't. I recently attended an open house for a public school gifted program. An administrator/former teacher rambled on about how wonderful the teachers are (and several times she referenced how wonderful she was) because they are certified in gifted education. Then she talked about her daughter's college career for a while (this is an elementary school), and then she bragged vaguely about herself for a while longer. All without saying ANYTHING of substance. Literally, no concrete information was provided. Evenutally one of the other teachers was allowed to give a helpful example of classroom work (which required a parent interupting the blowhard and specifically asking for it). I felt like House listening to his dumbest patient ever. It was agony waiting for it to be over. I was literally twitching. And I walked out of there thinking "I will go on food stamps to homeschool before I will let my children be imprisoned with an idiot like this woman for six hours a day." I suppose all other things being equal, a teacher certified in gifted education is better than one who is not, but I would prefer that my kids just have a smart teacher who understands how their minds work. Like me. But that is so hit or miss!

The "trauma" (that's a joke, sort of) of that experience has worn off and I've accepted that we may have less than ideal placement for next year. But it 's a long process and I plan to keep working on it.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet (and a fairly consistent state-wide policy), I've determined that required proficiency for kids leaving 2nd is 60%. Which is *whoa* lower than I'd have guessed.

Either the kid who sits through an entire year of school and still only gets 60% of the material is being ill-served by promotion, or a kid who knows 90% of the material without sitting through any of it is *still* going to be bored in the next year up. Or both - I remember my high school principal explaining to me that public schools are meant to serve the kids in the middle, and if you don't fall in the middle, you shouldn't expect to be well served.

Thanks to all the people mentioning HSing, I realized there's an alternative I hadn't considered. I need childcare Jan-April, and can't HS those months - but the public school has to take her back at any point if I re-enroll her, and can't keep me from dis-enrolling her later. (We've got strong state-level HS protections.) Now, there are many downsides to that sort of scheme, and it's not ideal - but if none of my other choices are ideal, there's no reason to rule out a possible option just because it's bizarre.

I don't suppose the web (or the school on carefully casual enquiry) will tell you anything about the distribution of *actual* proficiency scores of kids going up? I don't think you should put too much weight on the minimum, at least not unless you know that there are regularly lots of children who only just make it (which might show up, for example, as significant numbers every year not making it, assuming some kind of continuity). The median could be very much higher.

I know the median for our specific elementary for kids having completed 3rd grade (assuming that they're actually testing to the standards, rather than some other level), because those are public records.

Median percent correct for math ranges from 75% to 100%, depending on the standard being tested. For reading, it's 60-83%, depending on the standard. Aggregating across the standards, it looks like about 80% in both, but that's not properly weighted, because I don't know the number of items per standard.

In our school, 21% of "regular ed" (no IEP, only English spoken in the home) kids are classified as not "ready for the next grade level" based on testing, but the actual retention rate is much lower.