Does anyone have any experience with a child skipping a grade for the first time in middle school?

No experience here, but very interested in the topic.

My twins are in 4th grade now and have never been skipped before. Both took the Explore this year and scored well (dd's composite score is at the 99th percentile for 8th graders). They are in a 4th/5th classroom with 2 teachers, and staying in that classroom is an option for next year. Both teachers are advocating for them to stay, and have made significant commitments for differentiation (like completing the middle school math curriculum by the end of 5th grade). But then yesterday we had a voicemail from our district TAG coordinator asking to meet. I believe she is going to push for them to skip 5th and go directly into 6th/middle school next year. (But wait, I thought *I* was supposed to be pushing for a skip, not the district!!)

My take is that if they stay in 5th next year, they'll have a 9:1 student/teacher ratio (there is also a full time special ed. teacher in their class) with 2 excellent teachers who know/love my kids. The biggest down side of this would be lack of a peer group at their academic level, but it is not clear that would be much better in the middle school, as our district has a strong commitment to heterogeneous classrooms. Which brings me to thinking about doing a skip in middle school. (There is some temptation to skip the whole three years!)

I am interested to hear advice/experiences regarding which year to skip for this age range.

Dottie, is your advice to skip 7th rather than 8th because preparation/planning for high school starts happening in 8th?

According to the IAS, it is not advised to skip a transition yr (8th going to H.S. etc.) so skipping 7th would be better than skipping 8th.

I second what Dottie said about the IAS making sense 80% of the time. I think it should be based on the individ. as each case is unique. What works for one will not necess. work for another and vice versa.

Like the other posters, we don't have a lot of direct experience here. My dd11 skipped 5th grade to enter into a 6th-8th middle school. She is just finishing up 7th, so we've had two years to see how this has worked, but skipping 5th is still not exactly what you are asking about.


I just had one thought about this. I know that the IAS does say this, but I really, really think that it worked a lot better for dd to have skipped in that transition year. She has one friend who skipped 6th and came in as a 7th grader this year. It has been a much harder social transition for this other child b/c the peer/friend groups seemed to be already formed in the first year of middle school.

Do you have any specific concerns such as whether it will work socially or academically to skip a later grade?