DD9 took the test to skip 5th grade math and be placed in 6th grade math. For 1st-8th graders, a 90% is required. For 9th-12th graders, an 80% is required. DD got an 88% on a 50-question test.

School policy says, "Who Has “The Last Word” whether a Child is Promoted Based Upon Proficiency?
If the parent or guardian requests promotion or acceleration contrary to the recommendation of school personnel, the parent or guardian shall sign a written statement to that effect. This statement shall be included in the permanent record of the student. A district level committee will be appointed to review the information and recommend to promote or reaffirm the site decision."

DD tested on Tuesday morning, we got the results in the mail yesterday afternoon, school starts this upcoming Thursday. We're out of town until late in the day on Tuesday, which is elementary Meet Your Teacher night.

Fight for the higher placement or suck it up? DD has a successful grade skip behind her, in which her scores ranged from 92 (math, reading, science) to 88 (social studies - they recommended promotion because 2nd grade social studies wasn't worth the scheduling hassle).

What will the school people most concerned think in your DD's specific case, do you think? In your place I'd be inclined to fight bureaucracy and rule-followers, but perhaps not individuals who'd be interacting with my child who thought she, individually, shouldn't skip. (And if the result was that she didn't skip this year's maths and found it boring, I'd use that as a "see, if you want it you have to make sure you can jump the hurdle" lesson, and help fervently for next year.)

What was the test? Was it the end-of-year test for the grade to be skipped INTO? That is the bar in our district, and I would say if she can get 88% on the end-of-year test for the grade to be skipped into, that should be plenty.

But as Colinsmum says, one must take the temperature of the whole situation; you want full buy-in from the stakeholders. When you say "fight for it" do you mean "fight" or do you mean "sign the form"?

DeeDee

Edited: got the key detail wrong, fixed it

I would persue what you believe to be in the best interest of your child (the subject acceleration) to the full extent provided by the guidelines...siigning the paper. I don't concieve of that as fighting..I percieve that everyone wants what is the best interest for the children and you are playing your role in that dance.

Love and more love
Grinity

What does your dd want to do? I think that will play a key role in your decision making process. If she is already accelerated and wants to accelerate in math again, I would go for it.

I was just about to say the same thing. Is your DD pining away for the skip, eagerly chomping at the bit to get at the higher math, or is she basically content and thinks that a skip would be fine (or some variation of that)?

The test score is SO close. It comes down to rules Vs. passion. There's a lesson for her either way: a) complying with established criteria or b) fighting for what you want. Both lessons have value.

If she's anxiously hoping and praying to get the skip, I'd fight for it.

Email from principal indicates that decision was made at the district level, and none of the elementary staff have anything invested in the decisionDD trends to be anxious, and may choose in hate and repent at leisure. She was strongly in favor originally, but hugely relieved that it was a grown up decision.

So maybe that's your answer.

I remember talking to my DD9's teacher back in grade 2 about enrichment and she said "there's plenty of time for that later... let's deal with her anxiety first." I didn't totally agree, but I took a leap of faith and trusted this teacher.

We came up with a compromise and put DD(then 7, starting gr. 3) in the top grade of a 2/3 split so she'd be with younger kids (rather than always being the youngest), but also put her in the junior gifted math program. It worked. The teacher was right - that 2/3 split in grade 3 taught her some mentorship skills and confidence. (Of course then she went from a 2/3 split to a 4/5 split - big social shock! ...but she was ok eventually).

I think even with clever kids there can be "too much too soon." They can benefit from spreading things out a bit. It's a tough call, though, because there's the flip side of "lack of learned work ethic" and "enabled perfectionism" because things come so easily for them. Do we pace them or push them? Sometimes it's hard to know what the right thing to do is.

(WRT the anxiety, we've always dealt with DD's later repentance as cold feet, and encouraged her to stick with it - and she's never regretted sticking with it. She'd have backed out of the initial grade skip and every swim lesson ever if we hadn't made her stick with her original agreement.)

I think we may have the best principal ever. She emailed us on a Saturday to say that she'd back us if we wanted to push the issue of a placement in 6th grade math, but that there was going to be a dedicated 5th grade math teacher for the upcoming year (as opposed to the self-contained classrooms 5th graders had last year, with each teacher teaching all subjects) and that between that teacher and the full-time on-site gifted specialist (also new this year - last year we shared a gifted teacher with 2 other elementaries) that they'd be able to accommodate DD in the 5th grade classroom.

So I've requested that the in-class accommodation be defined not as "more of the same," and not as "tutoring other kids," and ideally as coaching DD to tackle competition problems using 5th grade skills, rather than just teaching DD ahead. And that the teachers actively discourage other kids from making "you're smarter than the rest of us" comments.

Waiting to hear back on whether that's doable, but assuming it is, that sounds like such a better plan to us.

This small fragment of the Internet, party of one, really likes this. Glad I could help, lol.

It sounds like your DD is relieved to not take the acceleration. Sometimes we need to have the decisions made for us to understand how we feel about something.

If this isn't the case, I'd want to know the nature of the 6 problems missed. It makes a big difference if they are small errors that lead to an incorrect numerical solution, but still showing conceptual understanding, or if they're errors that reflect that the content hasn't been learned. Even if your DD is happy with the decision to stand (and I would honor that first), I may ask for that information. If there are test-taking weaknesses, then maybe that's something you can work on directly during this year in math. We ran into some severe test-taking weaknesses in 6th grade math last year that could have been tackled more effectively the previous year.