When students are beyond their current grade’s content and thinking, we should move them ahead. This is called acceleration and is the cheapest, simplest way to differentiate. Teachers don’t have to cook up “advanced project” and students just naturally move on to the level that best fits them.
How Most Folks Implement Acceleration
Acceleration can mean skipping a whole grade, but most folks implement acceleration on a subject-specific level.
Examples:
- Judy is in 4th grade, but her pre-assessments show that she’s ready for next year’s math. She goes to Mr. Ramirez’s 5th-grade class for math then returns to her regular class for the rest of the day. Mr. Ramirez passes her math grade over to Judy’s teacher of record.
- Midge and Juan are ready for a novel study, but the rest of the 2nd-grade class is not. Midge and Juan travel to Mrs. Chan’s 4th-grade class during this part of the day. Then they return to their class.
Simple. Cheap. Minimal work for teachers. No need to buy and figure out a new program. No one had to go to a special training camp. They didn’t have to create a bunch of lessons and projects. All you need are teachers who are willing to line their schedules up and accept a few extra kids for an hour. (If your teachers aren’t willing to do this, you have much bigger problems to figure out!)
I once visited a school in which students who would skip to the next grade during math. After a year of doing this, they realized some kids could skip two grades. So they did. Eventually, they hit the upper limit of grade-levels. 4th graders were ready for 6th-grade math, but there was no 6th-grade at the school. So, those students walked across the street to the middle school where a lovely teacher graciously accepted these 4th graders for one period.
Did the kids get beat up?
Of course not. This was all planned out. The two principals agreed to it. The teachers involved agreed to it. The parents agreed to it. The middle school teacher prepared her 6th-grade students to host the 4th graders. The regular teacher prepared his 4th graders for how to behave on the middle school campus.
Flexible folks can make all kinds of acceleration work.
But Also, Yes, Kids Can Skip A Whole Grade
So yes, single-subject acceleration is easy, simple, and cheap – as long as the adults are willing to make it work. But, whole-grade-skipping is also a possibility!
I personally skipped a bunch of college courses my freshman year. I was technically a sophomore in my first year. How? I took several AP classes in high school. We celebrate high school graduates who enter college as sophomores. They proved they could do it by passing their AP exams. And we can do exact same thing for younger students!
I taught 6th grade and once had a student skip 5th grade and enter my classroom. She was incredible. A joy to teach. She aced everything I threw at her. Honestly, she could have skipped 6th grade too.
The big problem? No one at our school received any training on how to deal with acceleration!
Teachers, Parents, and Administrators Need A Plan
The principal ok’d this student’s whole-grade acceleration and then… disappeared. Never checked in. Didn’t give me any advice. I had no administrative support. Plus, I had never had a grade-skipper before. So I didn’t know what to look out for. Our staff was weird about it. The other teachers gossiped about my student at lunch (no joke). Her old friends didn’t hang out with her since she was on a different schedule now. I struggled to help her find new friends.
So the kid was great, but our program was terrible!
By the end of the year it was all under control, but just a simple “all the stakeholders should read this (free!) book” would have solved our problems.
Everyone involved needs a plan when accelerating, whether it’s one subject or an entire grade.
But Grade-Skippers Are Doomed To Be TINY NERDS!
Some people have a weirdly strong negative reaction to the idea of students moving at an appropriate pace for them.
I was once one of those people! I had a bad opinion of grade skipping. Why? Well… here are my actual reasons for thinking acceleration was bad:
- my uncle skipped a grade and then was small and also couldn’t drive to prom because he was too young
- on TV shows, grade-skippers are always nerdy and get picked on.
Seriously. Those were my real reasons. And they’re also the most common arguments I hear against acceleration from other people! Everyone knows someone who knows someone who once heard of someone who skipped a grade… and it was terrible!
Luckily, we don’t make educational decisions based on random anecdotes. See, my uncle’s acceleration was done very poorly. No one was really on board, he had a very unusual home life, and it was back in the 1960s! Using him as a reason not to accelerate is like saying you won’t eat pizza because the one pizza you tried twenty years ago (which was ucooked in a microwave) was gross. But that wasn’t really pizza – just as my uncle’s experience wasn’t really acceleration.
TV shows and movies show us that kids who skip a grade are tiny and nerdy and get beat up every day. They have no friends and only their calculator understands them.
Luckily, we also don’t make educational decisions based on pop-culture portrayals. Kids who are ready for next year’s thinking are also ready to hang out with kids a year older than them. My own student who skipped a grade had no problem talking with people a year older than her. This was a 10-year-old who could engage me in a delightful conversation. She probably had way more trouble socializing with her age-level peers.
That’s why acceleration was good for her. We moved her to a more appropriate group.
Students who are very smart often need to hang out with older kids. This is true for teenagers, it’s true for elementary-aged kids, and (heck) it’s true for my 4-year-old. He struggles socializing with kids his age because they can’t hold a conversation with him. Put him with 6- or 8-year-olds and he actually does much better.
Lots of Evidence
There’s been tons of research into whether acceleration works or not.
The document A Nation Empowered reports on research into acceleration. It’s free to download as a PDF or you can order hard-copies.
The National Association for Gifted Children has these acceleration policy guidelines.
Here’s a summary from Johns-Hopkins’ findings:
These articles are a small sample of the research that has been done at Hopkins, and the results have answered the question “Is acceleration harmful?” with a resounding “no.” Studies of groups of students who were accelerated in subject matter and/or grade placement strongly support acceleration as an effective and important vehicle for advancing the academic knowledge and motivation of talented students. Academic achievement among accelerants is high without concomitant social and emotional problems.
Want To Try It?
Want to try acceleration? Start small. Find teachers who are willing to help students. Accelerate for one subject with just a few kids. Call it a pilot program. Keep it short (one unit, one novel, one month, etc). Make sure to get everyone on board first, including all teachers, parents, administrators, and (yes) the students themselves.