Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Subject vs whole grade acceleration

I think it is very reasonable to consider how whole-grade acceleration will affect later academic competitions in high school. I interview high school kids for the Ivies, and they definitely look at if you are a NMSF for the PSAT, etc. Obviously, they look at many things, but if your ultimate test scores are lower than they would be if had not grade-accelerated, for us, it would not be worth it.

What about sports? Is that something he might be interested in. I can see where that could be a problem because of grade classifications.

Yes, this is what we have also found.

While it IS a trade-off, obviously (appropriate academic opportunities versus... well, pretty much everything else), there is no way that some of the current opportunities would even exist without actual grade acceleration.

It's easy to say that keeping a child in a secondary setting "as long as possible" or "to maximize performance" is a good thing, it's often far more complicated when you're presented with a real child who has needs which are going unmet.

Remember, too, that one of the things that separates "bright + hothoused" from "HG+" is that the overall RATE of development is simply different at a basic level.

So what do you do as your child pulls away from one grade above placement? Two grades? Beyond?

This is the kind of thing that results in breaks in the system, as Alex'sMom notes. There is no formula for what to do, and often even with a plan in place, the plan is only good for a year until needs pull away from it-- again. This has been our reality again and again through the years. If you need acceleration in multiple subjects, in particular, retaining the lower grade placement may not be wise-- because of the additional resistance if you need to accelerate again down the road. As the gap grows between grade placement and course/curricular needs, it becomes harder.

Or worse, there seems to be no way to make the plan actually WORK and still meet all of the rules/regulations that the district and state impose.

CFK's post reminds me of what my DD told me when I (with some anguish, actually) pointed out that her PSAT scores could have been 20 points higher... if only we'd had her take it the following year... or the year after that, or the year after THAT (when she'd have been expected to chronologically have seen it first as a 10th grader, that is). My daughter, a junior, "should" be (at most) an eighth grader right now.

Her response? Amazement. She said, after a moment of thought...

"You know that thing that {our neurotic herding dog puppy} does when she is in her crate? Where she compulsively chews DIVOTS out of her towel in her angst and boredom? Well, if I were in 8th grade right now, I'd be doing that with my own limbs. Having to put up with some of the fluff classes I have NOW is bad enough. I wouldn't have scored higher if I'd already chewed my own arm off by the time I got there." (By 'fluff' here, she means graduation requirements like career education, honors courses like US history and American Government which are 'interesting' but far too shallow and slow in pace for her.)

There is no way that she COULD be an 8th grader right now-- because if she were taking the classes she has as an 8th grader, she would be forced into one of two things:

a) repeating graduation requirements for credit-- starting next year.

b) leaving school after ninth grade anyway since she would have the credits required to graduate, and would frankly be pretty much out of classes to take shortly thereafter anyway.

I think that it's obvious why option a is not an option for ANY PG student (besides which, it may not be possible if there is a rule about retaking coursework), and option B is also bad because of what it does to college applications and opportunities for things like competitive internships and higher level academic competitions in high school. Plus it locks her out of high school extracurriculars which are tied to grade level (honor society, debate, etc).


While our DD might well be "Ivy-material" there is no way that we could have brought ourselves to force what would have been necessary to make that a reality for her. It would have broken her. What we have done as a compromise, even, has come close in my opinion. She can see that she only has another 18 months until she graduates (and really, only this year without college material). If it were any further away, I think we'd be in real trouble. It becomes intolerable intellectually at some point.

Looking at the thread, I'm guessing you mean me, but actually I didn't mean to imply that I thought any such thing - I don't. Plenty of great (and lesser!) mathematicians are not interested in competitions and/or don't have the particular talent it takes to solve a contrived problem under time pressure.

What is absolutely clear, though, is that success in school mathematics courses is no guarantee of having the ability to do genuinely original mathematics, or even of having the ability to do well at challenging university level courses. One of the ingredients that is generally missing from school maths, but provided by competitions, is experience with looking at a problem that you may or may not be able to solve, not being afraid of the possibility of failure, and trying some things that may work.

I wasn't interested in competition when I was at school, and so at the time I didn't mind that nobody made any attempt to introduce me to it. However, what this meant was that I started university with almost no experience of ever finding any maths hard. This was bad. Competition maths isn't the only way to provide that experience, of course, but it is often the easiest. That's why I'm encouraging DS to do competition maths - I don't care whether he ever competes at a high level, but I do want him not to freak out (the way I used to) when something's hard!

This is something I am anticipating as it was already happening when we were homeschooling. We decided to put him in school this year to "slow him down" because otherwise we would have been doing high school level work across the board at home. When we did the initial skip with the extra math acceleration, I really thought it would be enough but within weeks it was apparent that it was not. He is coasting through everything, which I something I'm trying to avoid. Once he actually gets some instruction he can use, I'm guessing he'll take off again. Then, you're right, it will be time to make a new plan.