Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School What warrants a skip?

MumofThree, I don't know that it is so much that I am disagreeing with you as realizing that there is no way to place a child who is many, many grades ahead of level in many areas at his/her instructional level and, even if there was, in order to do so, you'd wind up with putting a little kid in high school or beyond and also risking having said child have fewer opportunities as a result.

For instance, having our dd be about a year and half younger than the average kid in her grade and as much as 2+ yrs younger than some, already puts her in the position where we are not absolutely positive that she'll qualify for things like, say, National Merit semi-finals. If she were an 8th or 9th grader this year, rather than a 10th grader, all she'd have to do is show up for the PSAT in her junior year and she'd pretty much be a shoo in for NMSF. While she's pretty consistently testing at the 99th percentile on tests that give a clue as to how she'll do on the PSAT, it is possible that she'll have an "off" day and fall just a tad short.

I wouldn't *not* accelerate a kid at all in order to ensure that she wins competitions, is the valedictorian, or gets scholarships, but it is something that is in the back of my mind as we get toward the end of this K-12 journey. We've compromised. Dd is placed appropriately, like I mentioned, in her weakest subject. In her other subjects, she is placed more appropriately than she would be had she not been accelerated, but she's never really been placed at her instructional level in those areas. The quantity alone, though, of higher level work makes it such that she's busy and couldn't do more without feeling overwhelmed and without sacrificing a life outside of school.

One concern is whether a year skip helps much. If a student is advanced by a few years, one skip doesn't offer much benefit academically. It may be worthwhile to get to a higher level sooner if another school or program fits better, but one year isn't that much different. One thing that does change with advancement tends to be workload and if you have a kid who is pushing and wanting to learn, increasing too easy school workload can interfere with time for enrichment learning at an appropriate level.

She is likely to not make the cut as a national merit scholar because she had a less-than-stellar outing that particular morning, basically. Still 99th percentile, and we recently found out she's in the top 50K nationwide, but honestly, with her age cohort, she'd be more like the top 50.

Ellemenope - our daughter really does not fit with age mates, being wih age peers was one on the major problems per skip. She's not socially or emotionally her physical age. She's most like children two years older. A lot of the reasons you list not to skip were reason why she was too different from age mates and needed a skip....

Our dd is also HG(+?) but not PG.