Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Grade skipping trade offs

A few ideas for locating the IAS (three parts: manual, evaluation forms, summary and planning forms) -
1) Is your child a DYS?
2) Does your local school have this on hand?
3) Does your child's tester/evaluator/psychologist have this resource available?
4) If you choose to purchase the IAS online (new or used), be aware that the 3rd edition is current, as you may find some 2nd edition copies.

I checked the IAS out of the library - it was available via interlibrary loan. I didn't have the official "form" for scoring, but all the information you need to do it is in the book.

We began the conversation with the school from the perspective that a grade skip would be the method of meeting our DD's needs that requires the least amount of effort from the school... simply plop her in another seat and continue doing whatever they were already doing. So we were quite surprised to see them reject that solution entirely, and volunteer to offer alternatives that would require significant effort from the homeroom teacher. Nevertheless, DW and I were quite open to any alternatives they offered, and they were all given an opportunity to succeed. All we cared about were results.

The results were abject failure, and we found alternate means to impose a grade skip despite their lack of cooperation.


I haven't heard much about that, but offhand I'd say my DD would be a very poor candidate for such a thing. I simply don't see her hitting a wall academically. And socially, the consequences of being younger are significantly lower for girls than they are for boys.


The biggest trade-off I've seen so far is that DD seems out of step when grouped with age peers in non-academic settings, like her soccer team. But the reality is that she was going to have the same problem whether she was skipped or not, and it's actually better (in the sense that it's less pretentious and more of a simple statement of fact) to explain that by saying, "I'm in fifth grade" than "I'm gifted."


We started that conversation with our DD's school six weeks into her first school year, to give them an opportunity to see how necessary it would be, because we were already convinced.

When we finally got one into effect, it did begin with the new school year.


DD gets most of her homework done at school, although the why of this is pretty outrageous. She'd rather be playing basketball at recess, but DD says the teachers keep shooing girls away from it. The girls just want to walk or sit around at recess, which is boring for DD, so she makes use of the time by sitting in one of her classrooms and knocking out her homework, so she has more time for fun when she gets home.


DD knew of the idea by the time she began K, because we were already talking about it. She was very interested in the idea. When she was still in 1st grade with age peers, she was incredibly unhappy with us parents, whom she blamed for the placement. We had a lot of work to do to prove to her that we'd been arguing with the school for a skip on her behalf pretty much since she started there. It took her presence in a meeting with the vice principal in which we had a testy exchange on the subject to finally convince her.

Last year (4th) was her first year in public school as a skipped student, and it went well. This year she's already getting bored, and is starting to push us for another skip.


This was 100% true in our case. One teacher felt the need to announce DD's age to the entire class within the first few weeks of school last year, and social problems immediately materialized, as someone started bullying her for it. The staff did nothing about the bullying issue until I got involved. That would definitely be an example of sabotage.

DD's teachers were so quick to criticize every mistake she made and blame it on skipping that she felt the need to prove them wrong every single day. One positive outgrowth of that pressure is she made huge leaps in executive function. Negative ougrowths were a pervasive sense of insecurity, a suspicion that she was a fraud, perfectionism (a problem we were already dealing with that they made worse, thanks), and an inability to celebrate her accomplishments.

I think she is only finally feeling a sense of belonging since a month ago, when she was interviewed as a candidate for Student of the Year. Even then, she was quick to dismiss that honor with, "That's just what Ms. Homeroom Teacher thinks."

My DD has also had her share of teachers that have subtly (and some not-so-subtly) made her chronological age or asynchrony an issue even when it had no legitimacy.


Ironically, one of the very worst offenders was a teacher who was very quick to inform us (as parents) that she was herself a gifted student, you know-- so she understood everything about teaching a student like DD. She was pretty derisive about radical acceleration and often looked for ways that DD was "immature" or "not well-prepared" (subjectively so, I must say).

The continuous sniping from some teachers was pretty toxic, and bewildering to me-- nevermind to DD herself.

At the same time, DD usually had the ability to be fairly sanguine about their behavior. It was a pretty strange thing to have my then-10yo sigh deeply and ask me not to "do anything" about "Ms. _____" because "she really just needs to do this in order to make herself feel better about her own abilities and how smart she is."

Bingo. This was Ms. I-was-a-gifted-student-you-know.

My guess, having interacted with her over a period of about 6 years? MG. At most. There was definitely a sense of needing to connect the dots for her, and waiting for her to catch up, when communicating with her over some point of logic that seemed almost intuitively obvious to everyone in my household.

So basically, she wanted to believe that students like DD are "no smarter than" she is/was, and the reality is that someone like DD is as comparable to her as she is to a student who needs a self-contained classroom to accommodate a severe intellectual disability.

It was the fact that my 10yo innately understood that there was no way to intervene to make that situation BETTER-- well, that's DD. This is an aspect of her that has made radically accelerating her rather painless. She understands unwritten social rules and people so well that she can very fluidly adapt to almost anything. Her solution for Ms. __ was to give her PRECISELY the formulaic work-product that she wanted, and nothing more, nothing less, no surprises, no great insights, no subtlety, no deeper analysis.

A possible downside or trade-off for whole-grade acceleration or grade-skipping may be ineligibility for certain scholarships or youth program opportunities, as mentioned in this thread.

I'm thinking about this again because DS's teacher asked me recently why DS has not been skipped and if we would still consider it. I still find it a very hard question, but we may need to reopen the discussion.

Have you looked at the Iowa Acceleration Scale (IAS)? It provides sound guidance for thinking through a number of issues/aspects which parents/child/teachers may not have otherwise reflected upon.

Familiar with up to 4 years of successful acceleration, while there is good and bad in everything, we have found the benefits to far outweigh the drawbacks.

Whichever choice a family makes...
"Things work out the best for those who make the best of the way things work out." - John Wooden

Ultra, I find that from month to month the needs (and what seems suitable) can appear quite different. We re-assess quite often...

Agreed. We never seemed to buy ourselves more than about 6 months of feeling relaxed and truly great about a new solution to educational needs.

(Keeping fingers crossed on college, which seems so far to be quite a different thing-- hopefully the arcs match longer term).

Our cycle with schools has been about two years: a six month honeymoon period, about a year of "making this work", and then six or so months of "OK, what's next."

We'd just decided to make the current situation last another six months until the end of the school year, but it's not happening.