I found this on our district website this morning. I only pasted what pertained to us
I am hoping I can use this for acceleration!
The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel
Teaching Mathematically Gifted Students
The Panel’s review of the literature about what kind of mathematics instruction would be most effective for gifted students focused on the impact of programs involving acceleration, enrichment, and the use of homogeneous grouping. Although many syntheses and summaries of research in these areas have been conducted, our searches yielded surprisingly few studies that met the Panel’s methodologically rigorous criteria for inclusion; thus for this section we relaxed these criteria to fulfill the charge of evaluating the “best available scientific evidence.” The Panel could formulate its recommendations only on the basis of one randomized control trial study and seven quasi-experimental studies. These studies have limitations. For instance, motivation is a confounding variable, just as it is a selection criterion for being considered a candidate for acceleration.
The Panel’s key findings are the following:
The studies reviewed provided some support for the value of differentiating the mathematics curriculum for students with sufficient motivation, especially when acceleration is a component (i.e., pace and level of instruction are adjusted).
A small number of studies indicated that individualized instruction, in which pace of learning is increased and often managed via computer instruction, produces gains in learning.
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Gifted students who are accelerated by other means not only gained time and reached educational milestones earlier (e.g., college entrance) but also appear to achieve at levels at least comparable to those of their equally able same-age peers on a variety of indicators even though they were younger when demonstrating their performance on the various achievement benchmarks.
Gifted students appeared to become more strongly engaged in science, technology, engineering, or mathematical areas of study. There is no evidence in the research literature that gaps and holes in knowledge have occurred as a result of student acceleration.
In the case of gifted (or academically advanced) students who are advanced in their skill and concept attainment and can learn new material at a much more rapid rate than their same-age peers, it is the professional judgment of those in gifted education that they need a curriculum that is differentiated (by level, complexity, breadth, and depth), developmentally appropriate, and conducted at a more rapid rate.
Support also was found for supplemental enrichment programs. Of the two programs analyzed, one explicitly utilized acceleration as a program component and the other did not. Self-paced instruction supplemented with enrichment yielded the greater benefits. This supports the widely held view in the field of gifted education that combined acceleration and enrichment should be the intervention of choice.
Recommendation: Mathematically gifted students with sufficient motivation appear to be able to learn mathematics much faster than students proceeding through the
curriculum at a normal pace, with no harm to their learning, and should be allowed to do so.
There is a need for more high-quality experimental and quasi-experimental research to study the effectiveness of interventions designed to meet the learning needs of gifted students. Especially vital are evaluations of academically rigorous enrichment programs.
It is important for school policies to support appropriately challenging work in mathematics for gifted and talented students. Acceleration, combined with enrichment, is a promising practice that is moderately well supported by the research literature, especially when the full range of available literature is considered.
