Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments To skip a grade or not..

Because - hold on to your hats - the 'end user' child of the IAS is most likely not a PG kid. The target audience of IAS is Optimally and Highly Gifted kids.

And so - that is why we families of PGlets break 3 rules of IAS all the time -
1) No skipping into a grade that contains a sibling.
2) No skipping a kid who doesn't want a skip.
3) No skipping a bridge year (although I wouldn't skip a bridge year for some 2E PGlets - having done it myself!)

Or as a friend of mine says,humerously: We would never skip a PG child who doesn't want an offered skip after we've twisted their arm 360 degrees and offered them their very own pony!

It is true for example, that my son didn't want to skip while he was with his friends at the public school (which didn't offer one anyway) but after DS moved to the private school and didn't know the kids anyway, he was happy to skip. My bottom line: Do ask about the specifics of why a child doesn't want to skip, because often those can be adressed, BUT, it's still up to the parent to go with their best guess about how to get the most reasonable fit. Gradeskipping is too large a topic not to expect the kid to have some mixed feelings, unless you are lucky enough to have be at a school where subject accelerations and full skips are 'just normal.' Sigh - wouldn't that be wonderful.

There was this one school were first thing every morning, the kids all filed out into the hallway to get to their Math class, all the kids, aged 5 to 13. Sigh.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Ah, well that makes sense. I think it's easy to forget that the IAS is not written just for PG kids to take advantage of, because unfortunately, usually the only way you're going to convince a school to skip your child is if he's so way out there that they have to agree that regular grade progression isn't appropriate.

Really? I guess I should have been able to figure that out on my own, since the IQ cutoff they use is so low (1 SD out, or 115, IIRC) that I felt confident ignoring IQ considerations entirely. I'm not really a good rule-follower, though, unless following the rules suits my own purposes.


Amen - and I personally felt comfortable using the most-skip-favorable feeling as the one that counted.

FWIW, here's the calendar of DD's skip of 2nd (which was not a mid-year skip, since our district doesn't like those):

May 2010: I hate school, because it is so boring. I do not care if I'd be leaving all my friends behind. I will do anything to be allowed to skip to third.
early July 2010: Maybe I will just go to 3rd for all the subjects, but be with the 2nd graders for lunch and specials. (We as parents knew this wasn't going to happen, and kept our mouths shut).
late July 2010: I don't want to skip at all, and would rather be with my friends, even if the work is too boring. (We made her test for the skip anyhow.)
August 2010: I am the slowest kid in the entire 3rd grade. I have no friends, and everyone knows how to do the stuff we're doing except for me. Please let me go back to 2nd grade.
October 2010: I am really good at the work we're doing, but I still wish I had more friends.
March 2011: Skipping 2nd grade was a really good decision, and I'm glad I did it.
April 2011: All the review we're doing is really boring. I wish I could learn all of 4th grade over the summer, and be in 5th next year. Or go to a different school that only has girls, because boys are annoying. Or be homeschooled.

(Note the vanishingly-small "sweet spot" where both academic and social comfort overlapped! And the ratio of complaints to satisfaction!)

I have to heartily agree with you here - and thanks so much for posting your chronology - very instructive for PGlets.

Remember that Perfectionism - particularly the Outer-directed-perfectionism - is alive and well in most of us for the majority of our years on earth. Liberal helping of salt grains needed.

I think that what helped us the most over the years, was to have a family 'motto' that was short and to the point to refer back to. Ours was something like: "All members of this family are expected to put themselves in situation where they face challenges and have to work to overcome those challenges."

Having a guidepost was really helpful when DS was changing schools and fine tuning the balance. He 'got it' that I didn't really care which classroom he sat in, as long as he was able to create challenges during or after school to engage with. Since his needs were so extreme, and his internal motivation and creativity isn't the strongest, there were many years when this meant he needed gradeskips so he could be in the classrooms where the teacher created the challenges. I know other kids who are better at generating alternatives and great at 'self-differentiating' no matter what classroom they are in. As long as we kept the goal in mind, then it didn't become a power struggle about 'how to accomplish the goal.'

Make sense?
Grinity

Yup - one of life ironies of life where I live is that the only kids who schools feel comfortable skipping are the ones that need so much more that a single skip!

((animation of head banding against the wall!!!))

Then I have to remember that there are other places where schools are have it all in place and propose the accomidations to the parents!

Really -- it's that low?! I know that there's a new version out since dd12's school used it for her, but I thought that the version they used required a minimum IQ of 130 (2 SDs) for consideration unless the child had just missed the K cut-off and was one of the very oldest in grade. In the later situation, I thought that 115 was allowable. Did they change that with the newer version? I know that the newer version now allows usage of a composite CogAT score rather than IQ as well, which I have mixed feelings about.

Cricket, you are correct. That is what my book says too (we just used it last year.) The IAS has no specific cutoff, since it's not a test, it uses a base line score for discussion. The 115 came in when considering a child for early entrance to K, who needs to be 5 by Sept. but this child is shy of that. The normally considered IQ scores can be looked at as low as 115 in cases such as this. The good thing with the IAS is that even if the IQ score is slightly lower than most GT program cutoffs (though if you are looking at a skip, it's usually NOT lower) but there are so many other factors that are taken into account in the IAS that you get a better picture of a child who is/isn't ready.

The (likely very old) version I have has, in the "dealbreaker" section (along with "sibling in the same grade" and "doesn't want the skip") "The student�s ability (measured by IQ) is less than one standard deviation above the mean."

They do strongly suggest that if the child is not in favor of a skip (in new version) that it shouldn't be pursued. I, like others have suggested, feel that when children are very young, it is often the parent that has to do the "I know what's best" argument for my child and not rely on the perception of a very young child. Also, I can't stress enough, that just talking to the child about the advantages of the skip are more likely to lead to a child who is more accepting of the idea.

I just need to step back and admire that quote for a minute. I'm putting it in my treasure trove of quotes to use with my girls.