My child was grade skipped in a school that has NEVER done so. What I recommend doing is thoroughly researching everything you can about the research and benefits of acceleration and how NOT accelerating a child who should be can cause harm also. I recommend using the Iowa Accel. scale manual as a guide and allow a research backed resource guide their decision, not someone's personal bias. The IAS will have a step by step guide that will ask you multiple questions and looks at ALL aspects of your child, academics, birthday, height, maturity, to give you the whole picture. Then is makes a recommendation based on the score your child receives. It is extremely helpful and well researched so having something like this help form a decision would be to your advantage. Go to the Acceleration Institute's website and there should be loads of information you can present to validate your points. I think what you need to do is address their reasons by debunking them with research backed information. Be prepared for the common reasons given BEFORE you go into the meeting so that you can counter them right there and be knowledgable. I can tell you that others have tried to get accelerated at our school in the past but didn't succeed because they weren't prepared and merely based it on academics alone (and being that it was never done, the school was extremely hesitant but when provided with information that allowed them to make an informed decision they were very comfortable with it.) Basically, YOU have to do all the legwork. Don't expect them to know anything, and make sure you provide them with enough to think about. I left them with a portfolio, research, the IAS, etc. (though the presentation on our end was so well put together, we got our answer before we left that day
. We did however, encounter a few roadblocks after that, but again, debunked them, and were able to work it out the way we wanted!) Best of luck!
