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"At the same time, the researchers point to individual students who should not have accelerated for various reasons or who accelerated too radically. So the question to ask is: "When is acceleration most appropriate and what type is best for a particular student?" These decisions should be made for individual students only after a careful assessment of their cognitive strengths, achievement, and social and emotional maturity.
First that is not a study, its is a laymans interpretation of a study. Meaning you cannot look at methods, actual data, or anything else necessary to critically evaluate any part of what they are saying. What was their sample size? Was it CTY kids (which my own child was btw so I am familiar with their program) or was it gen pop? What was their statistical significance?
Additionally, the first article discussed was not starting third grade at 6 but rather an accelerated course in math. Next article, was an enrichment summer program (I wonder why CTY would focus on that?) and the last. Last one also about COLLEGE placement.
We are talking about the placement of a 6 yo with kids 2-3 years older. Nothing in this link suggests that skipping grades is preferred to enrichment (as I suggested in my first post in this thread btw) or that skipping is going to lead to long term success.
Yet again, you have ignored results that found that kids who STARTED SCHOOL EARLY (is that not EXACTLY what you are proposing?) were LESS likely to have high educational achievement?
And this is why the actual findings of scientific studies matter. IF you are going to base this on your personal beliefs than don't pretend the science matters.
You have completely misrepresented my position. You have not stated whether the child in question has been evaluated by the school to be intellectually ahead (and once and for all reading early has nothing to do with being "ahead" intellectually), socially ahead AND emotionally ahead. Because without those three in place, it is not likely that your child will be best served by acceleration.
Ugh, belief. So the results of dozens of studies of thousands of kids who actually are gifted don't matter? Then fine, want to base your decision for your child on two people. Go nuts. But it isn't as if your BELIEF is supported by facts.
You obviously did not read the entire study. The article is saying that kids should accelerated on a case by case basis, which is what I agree with. And yes it is about grade skipping: Whether the grade skips occur in the early grades or later, students who skip grades are likely to be ready to enter college at a younger than typical age.
There is also a entire institute dedicated to student acceleration with plenty of articles on the topic.
Apparently, you are just reading and interpreting things the way you want so have at it. All the rest of that you posted just lol if you don't agree with my opinion or posted research, then keep it moving.
I certainly don't see a benefit in it. I would have hated to have started University at age 17 or younger, would have cut down on socialising and making friends dramatically (in the UK, might not have the same effect in the US as the drinking age is higher so first years probably don't socialise in the pub so much - I'm guessing) and I doubt I would have been able to debate so well in seminars at a younger age which is a key part.
I skipped the 8th grade and wish I had never done that. All my friends were back in the 8th grade while I was in 9th grade. Around here, back then when I was in school, we went from Kindergarden to 6th grade at one school. 7th and 8th in another school, and High school from 9th to 12th. All of my friends were with me in the 7th grade and then I leave them all and graduate to head to the 9th grade. I hardly knew anyone from the 8th grade back then but had to move on to the high school with them. Would have prefered to have went with my friends. At the time I thought it was cool to do it, but the reality sets in after the fact.
I skipped 8th grade voluntarily and my daughter started 1st grade younger than everyone (though not an official "skip"). She already is mad at me for it, since all her friends will do things earlier than her (like get social media accounts ... LOL.... I won't let her before she's 13, as per most social media site policies)....
I was that annoying perky precocious youngster who started college at 17 (and had my bachelor's at 19) and was always younger than everyone else. I liked to glory in it. I was disgusting. I now hate me. But then again, I'm almost 50 and I'm not the youngest anymore.
I never learned how to diagram a sentence; apparently that was taught in eighth grade.
More important, I missed out on maturation skills I didn't even know I lacked.
I don't recommend it.
I don't know why I was in such an all-fired hurry, really I don't.
Can I ask what people perceive the benefit of starting college younger to be?
For some kids it might be the only realistic way of giving them appropriate educational challenge, especially if their local schools don't have a lot of resources or if they're off-the-charts profoundly gifted. That's probably the biggest one I can think of.
In some cases it might make a big financial difference; some of the early entrance programs that allow students to concurrently do the last two years of high school and the first two years of college are tuition-free.
Definitely not universal benefits, but I think in the right situation it can make sense. Like you I went off to school at 16 and on the whole I think full-time residential college young had more minuses than pluses. (I desperately wanted to take a gap year in between high school and college, and I think that would've helped with most of the negatives.)
I started college at 17 at personally feel I would have benefited me to wait. This is a very individual child thing and I would really hesitate to have a child skip a year just because. I guess I just don't see the point of pushing them through life faster for.... what?
I'll agree as well that reading at an early age doesn't mean a lot. Our son was reading well before kindergarten. Big whoop. At the end of the day, most kids all even out. And frankly, there is a big difference between reading and reading comprehension.
I guess being around a sister in law who seemed to think it was a big deal that her kids were so far ahead of everyone else got old and in the end.... made no difference at all. It's not like they've gone on to do something earth shattering.
Make sure your kids are getting a good education, are well rounded and involved in a variety of things and believe it or not, they will turn out fine. Just my two cents. I agree with Zimbochick - this is a mompetitors wet dream.
For some kids it might be the only realistic way of giving them appropriate educational challenge, especially if their local schools don't have a lot of resources or if they're off-the-charts profoundly gifted. That's probably the biggest one I can think of.
In some cases it might make a big financial difference; some of the early entrance programs that allow students to concurrently do the last two years of high school and the first two years of college are tuition-free.
Definitely not universal benefits, but I think in the right situation it can make sense. Like you I went off to school at 16 and on the whole I think full-time residential college young had more minuses than pluses. (I desperately wanted to take a gap year in between high school and college, and I think that would've helped with most of the negatives.)
So then what is the point in skipping a grade? So you can have a gap year? A lot of students don't use such years wisely. If they work, they work at some minimum wage or barely above min. wage job like restaurant work or retail, which doesn't really give them any advantage.
If a student is planning to go to med school or enter a lengthy PhD program (DH was in grad school for 9 years after college getting his PhD in physics), it might be advantageous to graduate from college a year early.
I support acceleration on a case-by-case basis. Our daughter began school a year early, and there were only a few mismatches around puberty and driver's ed ages. She was able to graduate from college at 21 with two bachelor's degrees and several internships and assistantships, including two semesters of teaching a freshman class during her senior year. She was offered a full-time research position at the medical school as a result of one of the research internships, which she held for a year as she built her application for med school. She was accepted on her first attempt, something none of her classmates had done. She is now a rising third-year student who has served as her class secretary and founded a student-led research group that is receiving national attention. She will turn 25 in December.
We have discussed how she feels about having been accelerated for kindergarten. She is happy that she did it. She will be able to have more time during her training and career to explore her three interests--patient care, research, and teaching. Her goal is to join the staff of a teaching hospital. In her field, an extra year of practice can easily earn her another $300,000 before retirement. She does not regret our decision even though it was not without a few glitches.
At every point, we had to make the best decision for the child that we had at the time. She started at a private 1/2-day kindergarten, so we had our options open for sending her to the full-day public school kindergarten if she had not been ready for first grade. She continued to the first grade at the private school, where we kept the option of transferring her out if things didn't go well. We could not have transferred from public kindergarten to private first grade had we done things in reverse.
As it turned out, she did fine in first grade, so we sent her to the public school in second grade without mentioning it to the school. They contacted us a couple of months into the school year to ask if they could test her for the gifted program. When they gave us her results, they were more surprised than we were. Whenever she asked what the ACCENT class was for, we just told her that she learned differently, and left it at that. The only way that you could tell that she was younger than the other students was that she was always missing the wrong teeth! She finally figured out what the differences were when she began middle school.
We didn't participate in the mompetition--we were just trying to do right by our daughter. I had had a bad experience with grade-skipping, as did my dad, so we chose early entrance with the option of backtracking instead. It worked for us. Had she been more immature, or a boy, or extremely small for her age (as I was), we would have made a different decision.
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