Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy NEED HELP!!! Advocating for grade acceleration

UPDATE:

Today the principal finally presented us with the school district's new Kindergarten Acceleration Guidelines. We are expected to sign off and agree or disagree to have dd6 (as of Dec. 1) tested. They have agreed to administer the IAS and testing will begin next week. Dh and I are planning to go ahead with the testing but are still unsure about the possibility of whole grade acceleration so late in the school year.

The Guidelines state that the following assessments will be administered: WISC, ITBS, and the WJ-ACH or CAT (depending on who will do the testing).

To those of you with far superior knowledge on the subject matter, could you please provide any specific information on these assessments?

Any help or feedback will be greatly appreciated!!

Have a great day!

I know nothing about the tests, but I wanted to congratulate you on the success of your efforts! It sounds like you have a number of supporters at the school, which is just fantastic.

I hope the train keeps rolling and your daughter is comfortably placed soon!

Thank you for your good wishes BonusMom!

Dh and I have certainly been fighting an uphill battle and we are hopeful it will all pay off in the long run. I think our determined stand to advocate for dd educational rights has definitely rubbed off some of the administrators in our district. The school's principal and dd's teachers have been our best supporters.

Are you in GA by chance? Just curious.

And as a parent of a child who whole grade accelerated after the first 9 weeks, it was a little shaky at first, but has been nothing but smooth sailing since. DS6, who could easily fit well in 2nd grade, is still a big fish in the pond (something we worried about), has made friends in 1st, and now also goes to Target (ALP pullout). DS also has a very supportive school & teachers, which makes it so comforting to us. Best move we've ever made for him.

Good luck & congrats!

Hi JJs Mom,

We live in central New Jersey. It makes me glad to hear that your ds is doing well with the move into first grade. I only wish that the school district would have sped up this process for dd's sake. As it stands now, after testing, evaluation and recommendation, dd will not be moved into 1st grade until mid-February. To think that IAS states that if the child says "no" to the move the entire process becomes null and void. My thinking is that at this point, so late in the school year, any child will at best have second thoughts about transitioning into any new environment.

Testing is scheduled for this week. Now they're lighting the candle up under us and honestly, we feel a bit rushed to get all this testing done before the week is out. It's enough to yank the hair out of my head! Never mind the countless nights of staying up in bed going back and forth weighing in the pros and cons. ARGH!!!

Nobody said it was going to be easy!!!

I was considering grade acceleration until my dd adamantly told me that she wants to stay with her friends. I was looking at info below to give me some gidance on my choice.

You might want to purchase (available at Amazon):

Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual: A Guide for Whole-Grade Acceleration (K-8) 2nd Edition (Paperback)
~ Nicholas Colangelo (Author), Ann, Ph.D. Lupkowski-Shoplik (Author), Jonathan Lipscomb (Author), Leslie, Ph.D. Forstadt (Author), Susan G. Assouline (Editor)

I think it has some checklists and you could go through the checklists and if your child is a good candidate, use your results to present to the school. I have not seen this- but I think that if you are impressed with the content you could even ask them to adopt the standards in the book.

Gook luck!!