Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Timeline of subject acceleration?

For us, accelerations are both to find the appropriate level, pace, and peers. This is more likely to be in the honors/gifted classes. However, we're accelerating DD into high school science, and will be placing her into the "regular" class to find a teacher more appropriate to her needs. We've done this with assurance that this won't lock her out of honors classes in subsequent years where the instruction is a little more even.

To find the right level, Developing Math Talent recommends an acceleration for 75-80% mastery, patch the gaps, and move on. For science acceleration, we did that, but also looked at the ACT science reasoning score to establish that DD had sufficient scientific reasoning skills to show she was ready to move past factoid- and contrived-experiment-driven middle school science. It was enough of an acceleration that I also talked with her gifted/language arts teacher to assess that her behavior, organization, and writing skills were sufficient to function in a high school environment.

Our strategy has been significantly limited by DD's weakest skill set-- her writing.

While not a "2e" issue, exactly, it's been a problem for her because she is functionally PG in every other domain, but as geofizz notes, when you're considering acceleration that is way radical (+3 years or more past agemates) then you also need to consider whether or not the ancillary demands can be met.

In writing, there is no real way that my then-9-yo could have functioned in a non-majors physics course at the collegiate level. The material would have been roughly right (she'd have been at about the 80th percentile in the class cohort, say), but the writing expectations were so much beyond her that there was little hope of making it work. I say that even in light of aeh's anecdote; I doubt very seriously that my DD would have managed even exams given her writing deficits relative to the demands.

Those gaps are a real beast to work around; you sort of have to manage it like a 2e issue that you get no real support or understanding for, to tell the truth.

It's unfortunate, but it means acceleration to the point that the weakest skill set can be made to TOLERATE, and then afterschooling/supplementing to accommodate the need for more depth/rigor/challenge in the placement.

Conventional school means of assessment definitely are an obstacle for radical acceleration. My sib's experience was certainly not the norm for anyone, and was greatly facilitated by interested faculty members allied with parents, as well as the choice of a math-focused major. And I should note that wet labs also were pushed off as late as possible, to minimize safety issues from differences in physical stature. But the fact that the overall arrangement was allowed definitely worked to the advantage of my sibling, who would otherwise have had an even more trying educational experience. It's unfortunate that more students do not have access to accommodations for relatively "simple," but pervasive, obstacles like writing. If there were some way to write accommodations for asynchrony due to giftedness, in the same way that there are post-secondary 504s for asychrony due to LDs, it would really help kids in this situation.

I also don't think we will be able to swing a similar arrangement for our own writing-discrepant child, in the absence of special faculty support.

And as to placement criteria, as we are homeschooling, until each of our children exhausts the secondary curriculum, I have targeted 80-90% (accuracy on end-of-course assessments, not percentile), as the upper half of the ZPD, on a subject-by-subject, year-by-year basis.

Our school district wants to see >95 percent accuracy for the curriculum skipped (including unit tests tied to the curriculum, which I think is ridiculous). So DS was given the district second grade math assessment in first grade and scored 98.5% accuracy (out of about 140-150 questions he got two wrong), but wasn't nearly as accurate on "unit tests" which has questions like "draw a math mountain for this equation..." (or whatever)...unless you've sat thru the lectures it's not necessarily going to make sense. The principal said we can subject accelerate DS for math but I'm not sure if the district is going to go along with it, or if it's even a good idea because a one grade acceleration for math is still going to be too easy. When we did a whole grade acceleration for DD a couple years ago they weren't nearly as rigid. I think they wanted 98 percent on the district tests for reading and math (which involved curriculum that would be missed) plus a certain CogAT score but there were no unit tests involved.
I'm not sure what is "reasonable" but just wanted to say what our district requires. Apparently there have been some kids that passed the district tests (scored 98+ percent accurate), they were moved up, and didn't do well which is probably why they are more rigid now and want perfect scores on unit tests as well.

When I was a child, my mother targeted 50th %ile of the following grade for whole grade skips. E.g., 50th %ile of 4th grade to skip into 3rd. She did have to do a considerable amount of advocacy-bordering-on-polite-harassment to accomplish them.

Districts I've worked for or known policies for have looked for 95th %ile in receiving grade. I think it's an attempt to address perceived negative social effects from advancement, by keeping the academics barely challenging. Also maintaining the high grades and test scores they would otherwise be expected to have.

Using this technique (assuming she used standardized test scores), my son should have skipped from 1st to 3rd, then from 3rd to 5th, then from 5th to 8th, then from 8th to 12th. So he would have been age 7 in 3rd grade, age 8 in 5th, age 9 in 8th, and age 10 in 12th. Yikes!

I think this is too stringent. Some prominent researchers on gifted education have a recommended an 85% threshold, within a different overall process:

http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10248.aspx
Applying a mentor model for young mathematically talented students
Printer Friendly Version
Lupkowski, A., Assouline, S. & Stanley, J.
Gifted Child Today
Prufrock Press
Vol. 13
March/April 1990

Kai, that is roughly where DD's majority skills would have placed her, believe it or not. We slowed that particular trajectory just twice-- at 7th and again at 11th grade. I'm still not sure that wasn't in error, truthfully.

Of course, we would have preferred about 75th-90th percentile, but more often got 95th-99th-- thus my statement about not being entirely sure that this wasn't a mistake.

So if acceleration becomes an issue, should we put aside existing testing (e.g., out-of-level EXPLORE, RIT scores from MAP testing) and request additional testing (in the form of units in the school's upper-grade curriculum)? Or did anyone find these other types of measures helpful at all in determining an appropriate level/ZPD?

Not exactly "useful" but then again, we didn't really understand what we were looking at with DD at the time, Loy. So when we tested DD +1yr out of level and she ceilinged EVERY subsection on the achievement test... we just interpreted that to mean that we needed to probably go "to the next year."

What we SHOULD have done (hindsight being 20/20) is gone up at least 2y in the achievement battery and tried again so as to get a clearer picture of where she started to come down from those ceilings. Does that make sense?

I'd say that grade level achievement testing probably can be quite a powerful tool-- if you understand that "99th percentile" means... this test was too easy for the child, we should evaluate after going up a couple of grade levels.