I am new to this area of Profound giftedness. We have been reading and discussing a lot since DS' WSCI result came out.

The more I read, the more unsure I am about what to do next.
A lot of kids at his intellectual level have been accelerated at least one grade level, should I talk to school at the beginning of new school year about this? I am not even sure if I can convince myself... DS7 is not mature at all... His best friends are same age boys who are also super smart. He gets along with older boys, but maturity level is obviously not the same. I am afraid it won't be suitable socially even if school agrees to let him skip. ( yes, despite numerous studies reassuring grade skipping is a good thing academically and socially for kids, I am still not convinced)

Here is also the reality: our district has not allowed one single grade skip in maybe 10 years. Last year, the district tested a seven year old boy who is learning maybe 7th grade math with his dad. The result was no grade skipping,but a few more hours of enrichment classes.

But If I don't do anything, I feel like failing my child.

What state are you in?

ETA: I see it's Illinois. This law says that school districts have to make a plan whereby children will be "grouped and instructed in order to maximize the educational benefits the children derive from participation in the program, including curriculum modifications and options that accelerate and add depth and complexity to the curriculum content". There's also apparently an appeals process, etc.

http://law.onecle.com/illinois/105ilcs5/14A-30.html

Now, acceleration could mean subject acceleration-- but it seems like they have to do something reasonable. Perhaps subject acceleration would fit well for your son anyway at this stage, especially with your worries about maturity.

I know it's probably going to make you uncomfortable, but I'd start the discussions, yes.

I guess I fit that description. My district had sporadic enrichment programs some years while I was growing up. There was some talk of me skipping from 2nd to 3rd grade, but I was in a multi-age class anyway, and I couldn't catch a ball. My perception as a child was that the ball was the deciding factor, but who knows? In 4th grade, I was all out of multi-age classrooms and got stuck in elementary when all my friends moved on to the middle school.

Later, when we actually had a gifted program and I was in 6th grade, they decided that the 6th grade gifted class would not be stimulating enough for me, so they put me in the 8th grade gifted class, but left me in all my 6th grade classes the rest of the week!

Even as a child, I knew this was too little, too late. My schoolwork had never been challenging, my work habits were abysmal, and I struggled unsuccessfully to fit in for years. My situation was made slightly worse by living in rural Appalachia. When I got a scholarship to the selective liberal arts college of my dreams, a relative said she was glad I was up there learning a trade, so I could make something of myself.

In college, I really enjoyed getting average grades and having a social life. I was doing the social and emotional work most kids get to do in high school, and it definitely impacted my GPA. In graduate school, my grades were much better.

Work has been difficult, since I often find that I am much better educated than my bosses. I do get bored with jobs easily, and have rarely held the same job for more than a couple of years. Several years ago, I left a job with high pay and prestige to become a teacher. There are plenty of intellectual challenges in this field, but I do tend to let the boring tasks--like grading--pile up. After several years, I finally got to teach the subject I love in a functional school, and they are starting to give me leadership positions like department chair.

That's been my experience.

I developed this little exercise--call it Fantasy Middle School, if you like--to spark a discussion between my sister and my niece. My sister says it was a good discussion that taught her some things she didn't know about her child. Maybe it will help you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I want you to imagine a middle school, called Flexible Middle School. Like most middle schools, Flexible has some required classes, and some electives.

Requirements:
literature (reading)
composition (writing)
math
social studies
lab sciences

Unlike most middle schools, you do have some choices about how you structure your class schedule. I will present you a list of options, and you will tell me which required classes you would prefer to take under these options, and why. You can also choose to do no classes under each option.

At Flexible Middle School, you are more likely to get your choices if you have a well-explained reason, so it makes sense to explain the reasons for the choices that are most important to you.

1. Flexible Middle School allows you to choose two Short Classes. In other words, students spend the bigger part of their class time working independently, but the time spent in these classes is shorter. Are there any classes you would prefer to take as Short Classes?�

2. In Accelerated Classes at Flexible Middle School, students are allowed to take classes aimed at higher grade levels (e.g. 6th graders may take classes with 7th or 8th grade level work). Students in these classes may be older, the same age, or even younger than you, but they are all capable of the work that is given. Some of them will end up finishing Flexible Middle School a year earlier. Others will just take more elective classes and finish at the regular time. Are there any required classes you would prefer to take as Accelerated Classes?

3. In Tutorials, students are given tough problems or projects to work on independently. Students spend most days in the library or the computer lab, finishing their assignments on their own, and meet once a week with a teacher to get help, suggestions, feedback, and new assignments. Are there any required classes you would prefer to take as Tutorials?

4. In Enriched Core, students spend about half the class proving they can meet the required benchmarks for the class. They spend the other half of the class learning about interesting, related topics that the teacher normally never gets to cover. The teacher also takes requests from the students about topics they'd like to be introduced and discussed in class. Are there any required subjects you would like to take as Enriched Core?

Hi Grace, I have 11 yo twins who just finished elementary school with no skips. Both kids would be excellent candidates for grade skips in many ways. Both received very high scores on the Explore test when they were in 4th grade, along with other indicators they are both hg+.

Reasons we have not pushed for skips:

1. Dd and ds are not unhappy. This by itself would not be sufficient. In addition, they have been learning, perhaps not as much as if they had been skipped, but enough to face some challenge and develop study skills.

2. They were in a good environment at their elementary school for developing social skills. Our kids have not been advanced beyond their years in the area of maturity, perhaps even a bit behind other kids their age. They have come a long way and I am now comfortable with them entering middle school in the fall.

3. The teacher-student ratio will drop significantly when they start middle school, so we had an incentive to keep them in an environment where we knew they would get more individual attention.

4. While there were no gifted programs or pull-outs at their elementary, the school has a focus on in-class differentiation, which really did work pretty well for the most part.

5. We have supplemented with music lessons and on-line courses through NUMATS.

6. From my own observations back when I was a college student at a small, elite college, there are pitfalls associated with going off to college at a very young age - it works for some but is not a perfect solution for every kid. I'd rather my kids start college at 17-18 yo with a head start on the college curriculum.

7. We happen to be zoned for a middle school that has *some* mechanisms for accommodation. For example, this coming year in 6th grade, our kids have been placed in Honors Algebra I for math, in a section with only 6th and 7th graders (no 8th graders).

Our kids are thriving, and I think they would have also done fine with a skip or two. Whether or not to skip can be a hard call. For our kids, I have no regrets about not skipping, at least for now.

D16 is PG, and has not skipped. She goes to a private independent school. There were some social reasons we did not seek to skip her, and also some executive function issues (diagnosed last year as a non-verbal learning disability). We have done a lot of supplementing in the summers (language camps, gifted day camps, etc); she is at Davidson THINK right now, and I think the torrid pace is her favorite part of it.

If I have regrets, they are not about skipping, but more about whether we should have moved her to one of the other private schools in town a few years ago (more AP classes offered, a faster pace for the top kids). But she is relatively content, and seems to be handling the social and organization issues much better this year in preparation for college.

I totally agree. I prefer advanced curriculum in their grades. I felt that education is the marathon event and sprinting all the way may not be a good idea. But all depends on the kids and their environment, I suppose. If the kids are happy in their environment and we can still give them challenges/stimulation with advance curriculum, why shouldn't we keep them where they are happy. But if the kids are frustrated/bored (especially leading to behavioral probelems, emotional distress) definitely need a change.

I guess different strokes for different folks. (But I do reserve to change my sentiment if I see my DDs get frrustrated with the class/school.)

DS10 couldn't be mainstreamed in a regular public school program because he was so out there intellectually but (IMO) not socially & emotionally mature enough to be skipped during the early grades.

We've always enrolled DS10 in gifted schools that accelerate but keep the kids with age peers so we've never done a full grade skip. From K-3 he was in a program that accelerated him 3 yrs in math & reading, 1 yr for the rest & he was with his age peers. In his new school he does have a grade skip for math + acceleration (to equal a 3 yr acceleration) and he really enjoyed being with the older kids last year. At this point i would consider a grade skip for him but not when he was younger.

In reading posts from people whose kids have skipped grades, a common thread is that they develop ADD or problems with executive functioning, etc. Obviously, many kids who skip do very well and it's a great option.
However, there are probably also quite a few kids who emotionally are not able to handle the skip. They may handle it as you skip them into second grade but then when they are young 7th graders (etc.), they can't handle the huge homework load, the need to take notes quickly, the importance of filling out boring worksheets correctly.
I've asked this before- I wonder how many grade skippers end up in the top 10% of their high school class by GPA? (Not to say that GPA is the final metric to measure someone but I would guess that some grade skippers lose out ultimately by skipping).

I agree. It is all very dependent on the particular kid's unique situation. For my DS7, he needed a skip in our local school system, because it would have been too difficult to differentiate for him if he stayed with agemates. It turned out to be too difficult even with a skip, and we finally moved him to a school for HG kids. This is working much better (skip plus advanced class). We likely would have had to do another skip in our local school system if we had stayed, and we didn't want to.

I think the main issues for our kid in a non-GT school were the too-slow pace of learning and lack of intellectual peers. Even with a grade skip, these issues remained. He's only had half a year of the HG school, but that worked great so far. If the local school had even one other kid who was working at a similar pace, I think things would have been more workable.

Twins are each other's closest friends.

Are they in the same classroom at school?

I was skipped and when we moved I was un-skipped.

I felt a great relief when I was skipped. I felt like I could learn again. I enjoyed my classes. When I was skipped I spent a lot more time socializing.

Most of the time when I was unskipped, I just zoned out or snuck books in. Or went to the library to read during lunch. I was so starved for knowledge, I would grab an encyclopedia and read it. Or get a math book down and look for the hard problems. Or I would just daydream. Except for sports, I had little in common with my age peers.

I had run ins with teachers. To the point where I would get up and walk out of school - as early as the 3rd grade. I was reading at a HS senior level by then. I could do any type of arithmetic in my head. And I felt trapped, hungry, and very, very bored.

Eventually I ended up unskipped in a high school that served kids of a local research community. The classes were all honors classes with a torrid pace with high expectations with some bright kids. Everyone in those classes later became MDs, JDs, or PHDs. The program was essentially what you would find today at a top Magnet school. I was very fortunate to land there.

I ran out of classes to take, won just about every writing or math contest, and nearly maxed out all the tests, by the end of the 11th grade.

The short exposure to this rigor and the fact my mother and grandparents indulged my interests, made me what I am as an adult.

In my mind from a formal education perspective, the years from 9 years old to 15 years old, and my last year of high school, were partially or totally wasted.

I do not think you can have a master plan for your kids. Something like that would not have worked for me as my interests waxed and waned. I needed a lot of un-programmed time to discover stuff on my own, too.

In retrospect, if I could design something to fit me or someone like me, I'd move to a district with objective requirements for skips, a supportive staff for GT kids, a GT set of schools, a rigorous Jr High/HS program with AP and/or IB, and then also find tutors in the specific areas I liked the most - creative writing, math, astronomy, and computation.

Our twins have been in the same class for the past 3 years - 3rd-5th grade, and they are best friends. A twin can be an awesome thing for a pg kid to have.

We decided not to skip our DS10. The principal offered to let him skip 6th this Fall, but our DS was really reluctant to leave his friends. He is also one of the youngest and smallest child in his grade.

When he was in 4th grade, he was really bored, but his close friends kept school 'fun' for him, and I worked with him on his math. Last year, 'armed' with his test results (WISC, WIAT, and SCAT), we were able to get him accelerated in math and science, but he stayed with his 5th grade class for everything else. He will have the same accommodation in the Fall, and we may be able to revisit the skip idea.

I agree- it depends alot on the child, etc. Some kids become so depressed and shut down so much if they don't skip, it's better to skip. Some kids can still function, esp. if their school has enrichment, a good G/T program, etc.
If you look at some of the posters on this site who talk about ADD, etc, some of these kids have been skipped and are 1-3 years younger than their agemates. obviously, ADD is a medical diagnosis, so these could be kids who have ADD and that's it. I will not mention the posters' names since you can see them in old archived messages.
However, I mention this issue since it's something parents may not think about in skipping their 5-year old to second grade. The homework level and the pace in school goes up alot each year, and by 6th grade, etc. it can be overwhelming for even gifted kids. My son tested on the math part of the WJ-III in first grade into the 8th grade part on alot of it, yet he's sat tight (slightly bored but stable) working on speed math tests, since that is what the school wants from him now.
Our gifted program starts in 4th grade and is full-time. It seems to be very good- they kids skip 1-2 grades of math in it. What if we had absolutely nothing for him, which some posters on this site tell us they have? Maybe skipping would be his best option. It obviously depends alot on the child, the family, and the local resources.

I like to dream about what is possible in school sometimes. In reality, I pick my battles because I want to stay employed. But dreaming is good.

Ideally, instead of skipping grades, we would be accelerating along the lines of Renzulli's Compacting Curricula. I sketched out a program once--for fun--where students could take combinations of accelerated and regularly scheduled classes and finish three years of middle school in two years. They would be in at least some of their classes with students in the ballpark of their cognitive ability, and they would be taking their same age peers in smaller doses.

If they chose not to finish the program, they could fill out their schedule with more electives. If they chose to finish the program, they would enter high school a year ahead, and demonstrate all or most of the benchmarks on the way.

But the whole time, I knew it would never be implemented where I work. When I mentioned it to a teacher with a highly capable daughter, she said, "My daughter wouldn't have liked that, though." And I know that my principal considers heterogeneous grouping to be crucial to what he's trying to do. I'm waiting for the right opportunity to change his mind. Opinions are usually based on your own experiences, and that is difficult to overcome.

Enrichment is good, but enrichment is mostly much easier for schools and teachers to manage than acceleration. Pull out enrichment may provide students that critical mass of exposure to their intellectual peers, but it does not address the issue of bad work habits that students develop when they've been cruising through work that's too easy for years.

are there many gifted schools working on acceleration models? we left a school (private gifted) that had all students 1 yr ahead then would differentiate for math & reading. THe program ended after 9th grade and the kids went off to what ever HS to take AP classes etc.

Now I am in a similar public gifted. They are not as ready to differentiate but do it when there is a real need (ie My DS and math) They prefer to keep the kids on the 1-yr-ahead track.

I really had trouble finding a good school on the east coast that could meet his needs. I think what Davidson does can't be beat and we are still tempted to pick up and move west. We are going to see how this 2nd year here goes before making any decisions.

It's a tough one. I have one kid that is great with enrichment, the other needs acceleration. they make me dizzy sometimes! lol

Gracew - from what you say above, you happen to be in one of those 'lucky' districts where your son does have peers at his age-level. If they aren't 'exact' fit peers, then they are 'close enough.'

Here's the Grinity 'qucik and dirty' - "Is my kid ok? Test".

1) Child is happy. happy socially and happy to go to school and do the academics.
2) Child is willing to try new activities that that he doesn't easily excell at the very first 5 minutes.

If both of these are true, and you feel that 'somehow' you child is learning good work ethic, then stop worrying and consentrate on enjoying your family. Look into a few fun summer enrichment activities - maybe!

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Let's look at the facts.

15 year old girl, valedictorian, swim team captain, going to prom, then MIT.

http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/region_n_palm_beach_county/jupiter/suncoast%27s-super-student,-15,-already-heading-to-mit

Well, this guy skipped and graduated at 16. Class Valedictorian and National Merit.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nb/katy/news/4825422.html

this guy was the class clown but still graduated at 16 as valedictorian.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index...ledictorian-of-his-class-in-high-school/

Not good enough? How about 16 and Summa Cum Laude from college?

http://carolfinds.blogspot.com/2007/04/16-year-old-up-valedictorian.html

Oh, I went to college with a 15 year old freshman, who went on to get a PhD and has been a college professor for decades. Dated women that were two or three years older than him, including some of my sorority sisters and the woman he married. Don't agree with everything he says, but he seems to be well-adjusted.

Unfortunately, although these anecdotes are interesting, it doesn't answer the question- what percentage of grade skippers have an outcome like that? The 15 yo valedictorian wears a headdress and comes from a foreign country, which also is helpful in terms of applications for diversity, etc.
I remember a PG boy who was a prodigy who cracked under the pressure. (I can't think of his name and I'm sure others have read about him). He ended up being basically unemployed and his hobby was memorizing trolley car schedules.
Some grade skippers are very successful and some aren't. Obviously, it's complex in analyzing what features make some successful and others not. This is simply food for thought!

I'm not sure what I'd be classified as technically, but there were long periods in which I was left at grade level. After a couple of months of hell after starting in 1st grade, my parents wound up pulling me out of school at times because of the bullying, my growing frustration/depression, and the teacher's approval and sanctioning of the bullying for not fitting in right. When this would happen, my parents found ways for me to audit/take college courses, help with research, read widely on my own in addition or as an alternative to school.

This was pretty much a cycle until partway through middle school, when I found drugs/alcohol to help me survive going to school (boredom in classes, teachers who didn't want to help me, and students bullying me/beating me up). Not good at all. Ironically, this was when administrators saw me as a gifted student--4.0 and apathetic about not learning anything new--and gave me a token grade skip in math and science.

To contrast this, DC20 was okay at grade level (also pg, but 2E) once he switched to a school serving a large gifted population. Middle school and high school honors and AP courses, along with athletics and academic extracurriculars, really allowed him to thrive and enjoy school.

However, if there is a major problem (situations that could end in a kid wanting to harm themselves to fit in or learning that they never have to work to succeed), another school or skipping might be a good solution to consider.

FWIW, that boy was William James Sidis.

I think "PG" describes something about a child, but doesn't address so many other issues like personality, drive, social skills, and academic level, that it's very hard to predict what a given PG child will need. I know many PG kids at grade level (many discussed on this board). I asked very similar questions with my kids were younger and I was trying to figure all this out, but having anecdotes about other children don't help me figure out what's best for mine.

If I had a happy child at grade level, with maturity typical of his age, who had friends he enjoyed, I wouldn't think about skipping no matter what the IQ score. I think it's hard to plan for what a kid might want later whether that is social fit in middle school or need for more radical acceleration. I've found it works best for us if we deal with the kid currently and adjust later as needed. Skips can be undone, they can be increased, or the kid can give up a traditional path later depending on needs.

Whether skipping makes sense depends on a lot more than intellect. Maturity, social inclinations and abilities, other interests, available schools and school flexibility, peer group in each grade can all matter. A skip from elem to middle school might make a difference in available courses, but a skip from 1st to 2nd grade might not change much. Some kids need many skips in all subjects and subject acceleration or skipping one or two or three years wouldn't come close to the right academic level, so then the kid needs to be with kids much older or needs homeschool or needs to sacrifice academics to be in school with peers. Which works for a given family depends on the family.

Dottie I haven't been here long, but I will miss you! Thank you for all the times you have already helped me both personally and through reading your insightful comments to others.

I think that A Nation Deceived is going to be the closest you're going to get to research on the long term outcomes for accelerated students that is actual research and not anecdotes. I also haven't seen any research (not anecdotes) that shows that many or most accelerated students develop ADD (which isn't caused by environment or stress, FWIW) or wind up not in the top 10% of their high school graduating classes.

My only anecdotes would be a child of about the same age as Dottie's ds who started as the youngest in grade and skipped one grade. Thus far (entering high school in the fall), she's been a straight A student in the top 1-2% of her class throughout middle school and my grandmother who started even younger than dd12 and skipped two grades. That was a long time ago but she, too, did very well and graduated as one of the top students in her NY high school graduating class.

That is not to say that all gifted kids or even all PG kids need the same thing. As many others have said, it depends on so much more than the IQ scores and the choice you make today isn't set in stone for tomorrow.

OT: Dottie, we shall miss you! Who else will crunch our numbers for us?

Does a really late skip count? I don't claim to be PG, but I was the youngest in my class with a late sumer bday, and I skipped my senior year of high school to go to full-time college, dual enrollment without taking any classes at the high school. Until I got to college, school was a boring waste of time for me for the most part, and if I had ever heard of grade skipping back then, I would have found a way to do it. I was one of the top students before my senior year, and remained in the top upon graduation. I also had some ridiculously high weighted GPA with all the college classes on my transcript.

Depending on how you look at it, I'm either a GT kid who never skipped a grade, or possibly one who skipped one really late....but either way, in retrospect I wish I had skipped a grade or two in early elementary.

ETA: I guess my point is that even a not PG kid can sometimes benefit from a grade skip. As some wise person on this board has pointed out before, the Iowa Acceleration Scale was not written with PG kids in mind, it was written based on the fact that various forms of acceleration are beneficial to all GT kids. I still agree that grade skips will depend on the kid, no matter what flavor of gifted, but you don't need to be PG to benefit from a grade skip depending on the situation.

ETA - Dottie leaving! The horror!!!! We will all miss you and your insightful comments very much.

Thank you all so much for your wonderful inputs!

I have read all the replies and feel much more prepared. I was thinking this morning on my train ride, that I would approach to his teacher at beginning of new school year about the possibility to do subject accelerating, at least see what the reponse would be. The ideal case would be for him to spend morning in the higher level class for math and reading and come back to his grade level for art, music and gym classes in the afternoon.

I have another crazy idea of testing both my boys for Chicago regional gifted school this fall to see if they could both get in ( not sure at all for DS 4.5). If that works, we might considering moving.

First thing first, I've got his music teacher happily agreeing to write a recommendation letter for his DYS application. I hope to send the application by 8/1, if the formal evaluation from the tester arrives before that.

"Gifted underachievement is real. If a child isn't getting perfect grades, maybe they do need a skip!"

I'm interested in exploring Annette's statement further, as we're midway through the academic year in Australia and my daughters' grades are less than perfect. Is it underachievement? Is it boredom? Are there learning disabilities? Are there gaps in higher order critical thinking skills? Is it maturity? And how do you figure out the solution if you're not sure what's causing the 'problem'?

And to what extent is it a problem? One of the bits of advice I got when accelerating my girls was that the 'ideal' place for them to be was at the bottom of the top-third of students in the grade-skipped class - just higher than middle of the road, but well below the top of the class.

What do others think? What do 'less than perfect grades' tell you?

jojo

I feel similarly about my 10 year old. This lead to homeschooling for him starting as a 2nd grader. We could have done a 1 year skip, but that still wouldn't have come close to what we needed academically and he would have really resisted the additional output required. I'm still calling him the same grade because now I feel that we're going to cover every possible random topic we can because he doesn't seem driven and emotionally mature enough to go away to college early. If he comes to me in a couple years saying he'd like to do that, we'll re-evaluate.

All that be said, I know several HG+-PG kids locally that are still at grade level with enrichment or higher math. They're just the more easy going variety and tend to do a bunch of outside enrichment.


Love this! Totally agree. I know we're making educational decisions based on "least worst" at that moment. Nothing is perfect.

Dottie,
Thank you for your tremendous help! I come to think of you and other parents in this forum as my 'little circle of friends'! We'll miss you terribly! Do visit from time to time.

Wow, I don't know if I'd be comfortable putting my dd in a spot where she'd be around the 70th-75th percentile. I was only comfortable with accelerating dd12 b/c she was going to easily be in the top 10% of the receiving grade and she actually wound up much higher than that once she got there. Math is the one area where I'd say she's right at that top 10% point or a bit below or a bit above at times post-skip. However, I wouldn't want her at that same spot in all subjects. I think it would make her feel pretty bad when she was used to being the top student in her grade in most subjects pre-skip. I guess that, if that "bottom part of the top third" was a very temporary thing, I might be okay with it.

With a kid going into high school, I guess that maintaining As is more important when she'll be looking at college applications and scholarships as well.

In terms of what less than perfect grades mean, I guess that it depends on the child. In my family, I've seen in mean poor study skills, 2e issues, laziness... I can't recall for sure at this point, but I don't think that the IAS recommends against accelerating kids who are underachieving. That's a tough one, though, b/c it can breed continued underachievement to never appropriately challenge the kid. I'd vote for supplementation and work on whatever is lacking (study skills, work ethic, etc.) to get the underachievement under control before major acceleration. Perhaps subject acceleration coupled with support could be a good first step for an underachiever. We had some luck with that with our younger dd this past year.

You don't worry about perfectionism? Being in the second tenth from the top sounds like a normal and healthy adjustment to make.

Sweating your grade is an important part of education. I mean when we tell all the students in the school to try their best, there's usually a significant number of students who know that we don't mean *them*, that we want *them* to hold back. Giving a brilliant student some room to reach is a wonderful gift.

Do you realise how bizarre this sounds from outside the US? I realise you're talking about your DD's specific situation, Cricket, so don't take this too personally - it's more than I've been looking for an opportunity to attack the US teacher-given-grades-led system for a while... Following it to its logical conclusion, if only 10% of any class can count as high achieving, no wonder so many people see school as stressful and even counterproductive. And then the system is even reinforced with this valedictorian thing...

Our system is much less pernicious than this (details in a moment) and even so, the "I've always been at the top" phenomenon is a major problem for many students entering the much more selective environment of a (our) university department. One of my colleagues likes to address this with a large lecture class thus:
"How many of you were in the top 10% at school?" [Almost all the hands go up]
"How many of you expect to be in the top 10% here?" [Over half the hands stay up.]
"Look around." !!

The UK system(s, it's different in different parts of the UK, but it's similar enough for this purpose) has its own problems, but at least it is not set up so that you can only succeed if enough of your classmates fail. University entrance is done on the basis of national, externally marked exams (yes, I know about the SAT). [I'm calling them exams for short, but some involve extended pieces of work done under different conditions, e.g. an art portfolio.] Grades on those are overwhelmingly the most important element of getting into your university of choice, although there are some courses (medicine) and a few universities where you need top grades and then other things also matter. (Interview; the university's own supplementary exam; your personal statement; your grades at the earlier national externally-marked exams you took at 16; and, somewhere low down the list, teacher reference [IME, in a qualitative, "what is this student like as a learner" way].)

Crucial: all the things on the list put all the students in a school class, and their teacher, on the same side. They aren't competing with one another but with an external standard (of course ultimately there are only finitely many university places, but nothing stops your class getting disproportionately many of them). As well as there being no limit on how many students in a class can do well, we also have the other side, of course: everyone is aware that being the top student may not be enough.

Earlier in the school system, too, right down to preschool, when students are given number/letter grades [too often IMHO but that's another matter] these are defined nationally (in terms of e.g. what a student who is awarded a Level 3 in writing should be able to do) although they are generally assessed by the individual teacher. If the teacher has evidence that 80% of her class are working above nationally expected levels for their age, nothing stops her assigning levels that say that.

Isn't that better? Why don't you change it?

If I could choose a position for my DS in class, I'd say the 50th percentile would be nice. Ideally I'd like him to have no idea where he is in the class because it's never occurred to him to think about the class that way: I want him to compare his progress with his goals, not with other children who happen to sit in the same room. I know, dream on.

[And Dottie, so long and thanks for all the fish. Enjoy life!]

WTH? Wow! This ought to be an interesting tangential adventure.

I'm suspecting a bad bottle of Irn-Bru or something?

I'm completely serious - are you thinking I'm not? Whenever students and their parents care about achieving something for which the system is set up so that only a limited number of classmates can achieve it - whether it's straight As or being valedictorian - you have a situation in which someone can only succeed if enough of their classmates fail, for that particular definition of success. I think that's a bad situation.

I don't see that the UK system is so different from the USA system. I studied for a year between college and medical school at a university in Germany- admission was based on your Abitur (leaving school exam) scores. If you achieved a certain score, you were guaranteed a spot, which led to overcrowding at the university.
What if you freak out and blow that exam? At least with grades, you have lots of individual classes to work on. I think it's less pressure than having your admission to university determined by just one exam.
I feel having a good work ethic for the child is very important. They need to be able to harness their potential and drive it somewhere that they want to go. We have alot of "Tiger moms" where we live, and we see alot of kids having very high test scores who probably aren't gifted, but they are extremely hard-working and motivated.

A friend of mine mentioned on Facebook yesterday that a principal had told her that 80% of her grades needed to be either B or A. So, do not assume for a minute that American grades are norm-referenced. When you get right down to it, a significant portion of American grades are essentially meaningless.

I use a standards-based grading system to come up with traditional report card grades in a middle school (it's a weird hybrid of both systems). The school poster on the wall of my classroom says that B means proficient, and A means Advanced, exceeds expectations. So that's how I grade. I rarely hear from the parents of students who get Fs and Ds in my class, but I do hear from so many parents who tell me their child has always gotten As, they are A students, so the problem must be with my grading system.

In a way, I can see the advantage of a system that takes that tension out of the equation and unites parents, teachers, and students against a common exam.

but then... isn't that teaching to a test?

I think that the term "work ethic" is pretty loaded and doesn't accurately represent the underachievement pattern we are talking about here. It's not really a matter of ethics or morals to me. I think a school psychologist is likely to call the complex of behaviors here an executive function issue. Let me dig around on my floor for a book that talks about this.

Here it is!

Rimm, Sylvia (2008)_Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades And What *You* Can Do About It: A Six-Step Program for Parents and Teachers_, Scottsdale, Great Potential Press.

The six steps are:

1. Assessment
2. Communication between Teachers, Parents, and Students
3. Changing Expectations
4. Role Model Identification
5. Correcting Deficiencies
6. Correction

I need to finish reading this book--as soon as I finish cleaning the living room. I'm hosting the Book Club tonight!

If she goes to a competitive university, ie MIT or Caltech, then she will get her first B and maybe C grades. A friend in college had straight A's all her life and absolutely fell apart when she got a D on her first Organic chemistry test.


There are really three approaches to studying. One, just do what the teacher says. Two, do a lot more than the teacher says. Three, analyze your weaknesses on the subject and focus on those with a bit of drill thrown in. The latter is the best from a time perspective.

To get really good grades you have to know the subject and be FAST/no mistakes on producing work. These are two different skills. One is knowledge based and one is performance based.

Yes, it's teaching to a test, but I work in a public school under restructuring (two-thirds of the schools in my state and all of the high schools failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress this year). We are currently teaching to two different tests: the 3 times a year, state test and the monthly one from our restructuring consultant. Except in high school they only test 10th grade on the state test. Juniors and Seniors are either studying for the SAT, or the ACT, or they're not.

I shouldn't say "we". In restructuring it's only the reading/language arts and math teachers that are forced to teach to the test. As a social studies teacher, I'm free to pursue such frivolous pursuits as critical thinking and writing paragraphs.

Please forgive me for "pursue...pursuits". I can't believe I wrote that.

I can't wait until you finish this book - I really like the book in a way, full of advice and ideas to try, but then....there is the offhand (paraphrasing from memory)'well of course if a child is in a classroom where they never get a chance to work hard because of poor fit, then of course they will be underachievers even if Mom and Dad are doing everything right, but of course this isn't the majority of cases.'

Well it is the majority of cases around here!

I love it when books 'sound' anti-skip, but then when you read the fine print they do acknowledge that skips are vital in some situations, and explain why very clearly. The truth is that kids in the top .05% of ability are rare (expect for a few neighborhoods, and forums like this one.) Rare is a relative term.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

P.S. Oh Dottie - I shall miss you here! So glad we keep in touch offlist! What a gift it has been to know you. May everything you touch blossom just like this forum has - I couldn't have done it without you when we started out, but you are right - we have a great bunch here knows and shares regularly.

A couple of pps addressed my last comment so I'm just going to respond without quoting them all. Yes, I worry about perfectionism and yes I understand being the straight A student going into a high performing uni and falling apart. I had a lot of other reasons than that myself (personal and family) at the time, but I went into Berkeley at 17 having never really experienced the need to work and fell apart my first semester.

That is why we agree to skip a child with a fall bd in a school system where redshirting is common. She was already more than a year younger than some of her classmates and is as much as 2.5 yrs younger than some of them now with just the single grade skip. The work level has not been appropriate in most subjects still and she gets As pretty easily.

Where it has been appropriate has been math and in the quantity of work, which was huge for her in middle school. Going into high school, the counselors told the incoming class to expect five hours of homework/night if they are taking pre-AP classes. Dd is not only taking pre-AP biology and literature, she is also taking a second science class as an elective in order to accelerate more in science and has a heavy load of other core classes. She is not a fast kid. She could not handle any larger of a work load than what she has now, so further acceleration is not reasonable for her. Even if what is holding her up is speed and too much busy work, it is what it is.

I also stand by my statement that I would not want her in a position where the best she could achieve with her full effort is high average. I want her in a spot where she has to work to achieve highly (all As if that's what she wants -- and she does -- and upper 90s on achievement tests if that's what she wants -- and she does). Pre-skip she was getting straight As by writing papers in the car on the way to school and winding up in the 99th percentile of everything for just showing up on test day. While she's still in the 99th in a lot of areas, she has to put in a little work at least to be there. And, in some areas, she has to put in a pretty good amount of work to maintain in the accelerated class (math).

I'm with you Cricket. I wouldn't want my kid to skip into a grade where he had to struggle to understand most of what is being taught. It would be nice if there were no grading systems at all, but rather the kids are just taught new things at their readiness level. In early elementary, where my kid is, there are no real grades, so it doesn't really matter (it's "meets" or "exceeds expectations," or "needs to work" on something). I don't think we would have chosen to skip our child if most everything was going to be a challenge - that would not be his readiness level. We want him to be able to "learn how to learn" - meaning he doesn't already know everything being taught, and he has a safe place to fail so he can learn to persevere. When my kid does get a grade when grades matter, I would be happier with a hard-earned B than an easy A, but I would expect As and Bs.

I see the value in having to struggle to do well. I think it's good preparation for real life.

One of my kids skipped two grades. The second skip (over 5 to 6) was hard. The middle school environment was different and I had to spend a lot of time with him to help him maintain Bs. To be honest, I expected Cs, and was pleasantly surprised when his first report card came in with Bs and a couple As. But homework was a huge struggle. At the same time, he was also advancing in an extracurricular sport, and he had to struggle to learn some new moves. For a while, he despaired that he'd never be able to do an X in this sport, but he persevered and eventually did.

By 7th grade, he only needed about 10% as much help as he'd needed the previous year, and he ended the year with 5 As, plus he got the math award and a few of the teachers gushed about what a wonderful student he was. He'd also advanced a few more levels in that sport.

In his case, the struggling was a good thing. It helped him start to internalize the idea that perseverance is a key to succeeding when things don't come to him right away.

I'm not trying to say that I'd throw one of my kids into sixth grade when he was clearly only ready for fifth. That's different! As weird as the idea of a second skip seemed, it just seemed pretty clear at the time that elementary school didn't have much more to offer him. So we made the decision to put him into an environment where he wouldn't be the top student.

The assumption going into the second skip was that it would be hard for a while, but he'd adapt, eventually perform well, and would be better off for the struggle he had survived.

I feared you were completely serious.

I wonder, though, where you developed your understanding of the US educational system, as what you describe is totally foreign to my experiences in multiple states across the country.

You seem particularly disturbed by the idea of the valedictorian award. (Is there no equivalent, such as Dux Litterarum, in Scotland?) How does recognizing the academic achievement of one or more individuals result in (or from) the failure of fellow students? Perhaps with the exception of someone who misses the mark by a fraction of a point, I can't imagine any non-first-place student being particularly disappointed --- and he certainly wouldn't consider himself a failure... any more than an Olympic silver medalist would consider missing the gold to be an abject failure. Speaking from personal experience, those of us who were no where near contention for top spot didn't give it a second thought! It was just one more boring speech on graduation day.

As for straight As, how exactly does that condemn a lesser student to a life of failure? You do know that more than one student can earn straight As, right? That sounds to me like the same system you describe with the example of a UK student being "awarded a Level 3 in writing." I'm assuming that every student in a particular UK class could potentially earn the top "Level," right?

So you had your "opportunity to attack the US teacher-given-grades-led system," but I believe you did so without enough of an understanding of how it all works.

Will you be sponsor?

I would love to have a system in which grades are irrelevant and understanding of the material is the only/primary goal. Instead, we have a system in which inflated grades seem to be doled out rather routinely and in which a student can cram for a test, get the grade by memorization, and then not be able to discuss the subject intelligently 2 years later.

And don't get me started on how much the children compare themselves, even at incredibly young ages. I don't know how much is human nature and how much is picked up by the kids from their parents (I suspect this to be a huge factor), since my child was the topic of conversation among parents pretty frequently over the past few years. Even in my presence.


I do think some of the problem lies in the fact that we don't have the vocational training that the EU countries have and instead pretend that everyone should go to college. It's raised the stakes for families trying to send their children to a place they don't belong at a cost most can't afford, but they have so few other options to actually learn a trade or craft in this country.

Because of this, everyone fixates on GPA or some other numerical determinative of college entrance rather than simply asking "is our children learning?" (sorry for the Bush reference, I couldn't help myself)

I could be wrong, but I read her posts to be critical of the Great Grade Chase in the US. Another poster pointed out something a teacher friend of mine has also told me, that the vast majority of her grades are expected to be As and Bs. How in the world is that justified? You can't tell me that the vast majority of students are more than 80% proficient in every single subject taught.

Some metric is regrettably necessary, but, admittedly anecdotally, my experience is that certain grades are simply expected by some parents and students, regardless of actual knowledge of the subject.

That was how I read it, anyway, but I could certainly be wrong.

The need to qualify achievement is something that is seen in everything we do. What grades we make, how much we earn. What neighborhood, what kind of car etc.... Judgement looms. You can happily stand back and say "not me" but it's a fact of life wherever you live.

I think in a perfect world, children should be allowed to test out of any class they are proficient in regardless of age. If they are proficient in all high school requirements at 10, so be it! It doesn't make sense to make a kid sit through material they already know for the sake of staying with their age peers, their social skills or maintaining lockstep with any school system mandate.

My DS8 is radically accelerated. Started middle school at 7. This year he will have 7-9th grade classes. Do I care what his grades are? Not particularly. As long as he is happy, which he is, I will let him take whatever path, at whatever speed he chooses. Will he be in college at 11? Maybe. Maybe not. He might decide he wants to take a year off to pursue the properties of Goop, who knows?

We all know that the education system in the U.S. has some serious flaws, but we have to work with what we have. The reason that we are all here is that our children don't fit the traditional path and never will. It is our responsibility to give them what they need and help them grow to who they will become. In a million years, I would have never imagined my son on his current path, but it is what it is.

I guess my point is snarking gets you no where. We're all doing the best that we can.

Yes, I agree.

I think that the focus on GPA and test scores (both in college admissions at the high end and NCLB and high-stakes testing at the low end) drives people to do unhealthy things (e.g. grade grubbing & inflation, the Atlanta testing scandal). IMHO, all this is perfectly predictable.

It's true that systems using a single set of exams to determine university admissions put a lot of pressure on teenagers. But I wonder if we may have more pressure here: in this country, there's a huge amount of pressure to be a perfect student with a long list of extracurriculars, high SAT scores, etc. And then there's the lopsided nature of admissions that confer advantages for all kinds of groups (legacies, etc.). And even so, the admissions process is still pretty opaque.

And from what I've seen of European exams, the questions they ask are much more substantial than 2-minute-max multiple choice SAT questions.

At least when everything is based on one exam, the system is transparent and it treats everyone the same way. So, that's one big source of stress that doesn't exist in places like Europe.

Interesting mixture of reactions there :-)

Of course I know more than one student can get an A! I don't think I'm inventing the concept of grading on a curve which I was first driven to look up when I was trying to understand why all the education blogs were so excited about this newfangled standards-based grading thing.

More to the point, though, I think it's a mistake for the same work to be used for learning and for summative assessment. Suppose I am a rational student and I am given an assignment that I could approach in two different ways. I'm confident that if I do X, I can do it well; it exercises skills I already have (the teacher may or may not know this). If I do Y, I don't know whether I'll do well - it'll take me outside my comfort zone (the teacher may or may not know this), I'll learn a lot from it, but this time it might not come off. If my aim is to maximise new learning, I should do Y, but if my aim is produce the highest quality work, I should do X. Now if I'm the teacher assigning and marking this work [and by the way, I have often been in just this situation], I'm in a real bind - I want my students to learn, so I should be encouraging them to do Y, but in fairness I have to award higher marks to better work; and as noted, in a large class I won't know to what extent each student is taking each strategy, because I won't have perfect knowledge of what the students know or can do, so even if I wanted to reward students who choose to go for Y, I can't reliably do it. (One student's X work will be another's Y work!) In the end I'll do some fudge (and different teachers will do different fudges). That the grades coming out of that fudge actually matter to university admissions means that it'll be very hard for me to tell my students that they should go for Y because they'll learn more and do better work in the long run: any student who sees their GPA as at risk of not being good enough now is obviously going to switch to strategy X. Risk taking and learning are reduced.

Here's another thing I don't think I'm making up. How many times have you read about someone postponing, or considering postponing, the point at which their child enters high school or takes high school classes for credit, because "the grades count". Wouldn't it be better if those decisions could be taken on the basis of what's best for the child's learning?

Of course assessing just on the basis of exams is problematic; I'm not claiming I know a perfect system. In the UK many qualifications have included elements like coursework (where a given exercise is marked by the student's own teacher against a given markscheme, with a sample being externally moderated) or variants like work that's done under controlled conditions (e.g. away from parents and the internet!) but without time limit. Those all have their own problems, and are relatively out of favour at present.

I had to google Dux Litterarum - apparently it exists, but that's how prominent a concept it is here. In contrast, I've more than once read "is it fair to deprive him/her of the chance to be valedictorian?" as a thing to take into consideration when contemplating a skip.

To try to drag this back into relevance to this forum, and in recognition that however we feel about the system we aren't generally in a position to change it, here's what I think the implications are for us as parents of gifted children. By and large our children are the ones who are going to do well anyway. Our job is to try to make sure they see the hoop-jumping GPA-game-playing for what it is: a silly game which has precious little to do with learning. It's fine if they need to follow strategy X sometimes in order to obtain their goals, but let's help them know what they're doing and be doing it by deliberate choice, not just because they can't imagine any other way. Let's tell on them if they're doing X and the teacher thinks they're doing Y! Let's encourage them to take risks - even, sometimes, risks with the GPA. If that's too hard, at least ask them, "What would be the most interesting thing to do here, if you didn't need to care what the teacher would think of the end result?"

ColinsMum, I, too, think this is a great post -- it definitely addresses the issue a little more squarely than your first effort, which stressed the idea that straight As and Valedictorian awards can only be achieved if enough other kids fail.

I have no argument that our educational system -- like every other one on the planet -- needs improvement. I do, however, vehemently oppose the notion that one person's academic success is somehow tied to or dependent upon the failure of others.

When everything is based on "one exam", presumably for all the colleges in the country, who determines what that exam is? I don't trust the federal government to do so. In the U.S. there colleges can look at the ACT, SAT I (reasoning), SAT II (subject tests), A.P., and I.B. exams, and there also prestigious contests such as the AMC (math) whose scores some colleges ask about. Most of these exams have essay components. Multiple choice questions do have the advantage of permitting broad coverage of a subject.

In predicting college grades, both high school grades and SAT/ACT scores matter. Why shouldn't high school grades count?

I'm a staunch defender of tests on this site, but even I don't think tests and grades should be everything, even if they are of primary importance. A college could value business experience in a business major, research experience in a science major, hospital volunteering in a pre-med, and music and artistic achievement for arts majors. They could (and do) value these achievement even when unrelated to students academic plans, taking them as signs of hard work and ambition.

There is no consensus on this among the researchers or administrators. Noncognitive variables play increasingly more important role in admission processes at many universities and in predicting college success.

Which researchers have found that high school grades and SAT scores are not predictive? Below is one of many studies confirming what I wrote. High school grades have a larger noncognitive component than SAT scores -- smart but lazy students may have good scores but mediocre grades.

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/cb/validitySAT08-predicting_1st_year
Validity of the SAT for Predicting First-Year Grades: 2008 SAT Validity Sample
Krista Mattern; Brian Patterson
02/11/2011
The findings for the 2008 sample are largely consistent with the previous reports. SAT scores were found to be correlated with FYGPA (r = 0.54), with a magnitude similar to HSGPA (r = 0.56). The best set of predictors of FYGPA remains SAT scores and HSGPA (r = 0.63), as the addition of the SAT sections to the correlation of HSGPA alone with FYGPA leads to a substantial improvement in prediction (Δr = 0.07). This finding was consistent across all subgroups of the sample, by both institutional characteristics and demographics (Δr ≥ 0.06). All correlations presented here have been corrected for restriction of range, but the same basic patterns hold for the raw correlations.

The exams are very different overseas. First, no multiple choice. Second, students often get to choose the questions they want to answer; the paper may have 8 questions, and you only have to answer 5 (or whatever). The exams are graded by humans who are subject experts, using guidelines created by the examination commission (here's an example from a recent mathematics exam in Ireland). If you look at that exam, you'll see that it's light years ahead of our SAT or AP exams in terms of what it measures and how it measures it.

There's typically a national curriculum and all students take the same exam. I understand that many Americans are used to the idea of local control, but this approach wastes a lot of money by repeating effort and doesn't guarantee quality anyway. A national curriculum is also transparent.

As far as I know (in Ireland and the UK anyway), the exams are written by subject experts (university academics, possibly teachers). I recall that my university tutor (in Ireland) wrote questions for the O or A levels (in the UK).


With respect, that's a very US-centric view of how things ought to be (and it's not backed up by evidence; I also think there are questions about the predictive value of the SAT. Not to mention the effects of grade inflation.). The goal of the overseas exams is to measure how well you learned the material overall, not how well you learned as it came, in small pieces.

Obviously, European students get grades every year, but as ColinsMum said so well, it's a mistake to use the same work for learning and summative assessment. What counts is eventual mastery, not the steps taken getting there. A parallel is athletic competitions. We don't pick Olympic competitors or medalists based on how well they did throughout the duration of their training. Nothing matters but the "test:" how fast you ran the 100 in the qualifier race, how good your axels looked, etc.

One thing about US schools that really bothers me is that the percent of correct problems on homework often counts toward final grades. Students aren't even allowed to make mistakes when they're learning! To me, that kind of constant pressure has got to be worse than one set of exams that you can repeat next year.

Okay, but this study found that the SAT I is a poor predictor compared to grades. Also, that article you cited was written by the College Board. They don't seem to be in a position to be objective about the value of the SAT!

We have avoided skipping our daughter. The first school she entered had so many gifted children and they were ability grouped (although called other things). I realize now just how much she learned through this.

We moved and it was different, but she was in fifth grade. Kids have sex much earlier here and I am not comfortable with her being with older children. She is in advanced classes and has always done well with learning more.

She ended up one grade ahead here just based on their school cut-off date, but she is way ahead of any of them.

In England [UK complexity discussion deleted...] there are a number of examination boards, each setting its own syllabus and examinations. Schools choose which to put their students in for, so they retain some choice of syllabus: it's common for a school to use mostly Board A but to choose Board B for a particular subject because they prefer Board B's syllabus for that subject. Most 18yos in England take A-levels, but many of the most highly selective schools have switched partly or completely to using the newish Cambridge Pre-U which is designed to have more headroom - someone who got a top grade at A level might not do so at Pre-U. There is coordination and control done by Ofqual to prevent "race to the bottom" and someone (not sure who actually) ensures there's a core of material universities can rely on in maths, for example.

You can see syllabuses and sample papers at the exam boards' sites, e.g. CIE. Here is a sample Pre-U Chemistry set of papers - note that it does in fact include a multiple choice paper, but it's not that soft an option :-)

Apart from the limited scope of the testing, and ending up with no guaranteed knowledge, sitting the SAT before your last week of school wastes that whole last year, which could be spent learning and working. And, scores from any time before that final year (or two) should not have any bearing on further study or even be reported once you're done.

Lots of studies have found that high school grades and SAT scores together are predictive. A recent study found that previous studies may have underestimated their predictive power because they do not control for course selection effects where able students cluster in the same courses, which may be graded on a curve.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/20/7/822.abstract
Individual Differences in Course Choice Result in Underestimation of the Validity of College Admissions Systems
Christopher M.
Christopher Berry, Wayne State University, Department of Psychology, 5057 Woodward Ave., 7th Floor, Detroit, MI 48202, e-mail: berry@wayne.edu.
Psychological Science July 2009 vol. 20 no. 7 822-830
Abstract
We demonstrate that the validity of SAT scores and high school grade point averages (GPAs) as predictors of academic performance has been underestimated because of previous studies' reliance on flawed performance indicators (i.e., college GPA) that are contaminated by the effects of individual differences in course choice. We controlled for this contamination by predicting individual course grades, instead of GPAs, in a data set containing more than 5 million college grades for 167,816 students. Percentage of variance accounted for by SAT scores and high school GPAs was 30 to 40% lower when the criteria were freshman and cumulative GPAs than when the criteria were individual course grades. SAT scores and high school GPAs together accounted for between 44 and 62% of the variance in college grades. This study provides new estimates of the criterion-related validity of SAT scores and high school GPAs, and highlights the care that must be taken in choosing appropriate criteria in validity studies.

Thanks for pointing to the Irish exam. It does look challenging. I wonder what math textbooks are used by students preparing for this exam.

I don't know specifically what is usually used, but the material looks like a good match for the various books by Bostock and Chandler for A level, (A core course for A level, Further Pure Mathematics, Mechanics and Probability, etc. - they've been around and continually reissued at least since I used them in school in the early 80s, and I recently bought a set for DS!)