Failure to Accelerate: It can be avoided, sometimes

When one spends several years advocating acceleration for their gifted child, they are likely to run into a multitude of excuses. Battling these excuses can become very tiresome and, in many cases, causes the parent to give up on the public schools. When administrators refuse to be flexible in accomodating these exceptional kids, the parents often feel that homeschooling is the only viable option.

However, it's good to be prepared for the opposition one might encounter. If one knows the likely excuses administrators will make, then perhaps a way around them can be devised before a meeting takes place. If administrators have alternative solutions, some may be willing to accomodate acceleration for a gifted child.

First, if your child is in K-8, you probably want to fill out the Iowa Acceleration Scale. This will provide some objective criteria to the decision to skip a grade. Unfortunately, when you buy the information, you must buy a packet of multiple evaluation sheets. The idea is that you could perhaps benefit other students and give them to the school so that they may make the opportunity available for other students.

There are still objections that need to be overcome, even with a objective instrument such as this. Some objections fall into the criteria of the shortcomings of the school; they are perhaps worried they cannot provide appropriate curriculum beyond a certain level if, for instance, you want to accelerate in just one subject area. Good ways of handling this may be "crossing that bridge when you get there" and pointing out that there may be available curriculum through other means such as online classes through talent searches. A child should not be held back based on worries about future accomodations. When children are gifted, you may have to get creative. It's as simple as that.

Another objection is that children need to be in the same place as other children after transitions. This is actually a subset of the argument that children of the same age always need to be together. This is probably true for about half the kids in a given class. The only response to this is to provide documentation of studies and reports that gifted children fit in better with intellectual peers than chronological peers.

A third objection is one that I discussed previously: it seems paradoxical to accelerate a student who seems unmotivated or unable to handle the work they already have. Few teachers and administrators can conceive of the fact that gifted children are quite literally bored to tears when they are insufficiently stimulated.

The best way I've found to handle these arguments is to have someone else do it for me. An advocate, such as a psychologist or teacher, can be immensely helpful. They need to be someone who has both knowledge of giftedness and the credibility (usually in the form of a degree or specialization) to impress the people you're working with.

However, even with all this preparation, I've run into administrators who simply lacked the flexibility to work with alternative arrangements. When one deals with this situation, there may be nothing you can do except to pull your child out of the school. In this situation, perhaps you can be lucky enough to find a more flexible school or you can use the most flexible option of all: homeschooling.

The Paradox of Acceleration

Many parents find themselves in an awkward position because their children do not cooperate with what is required by the school for an average student, and the teachers use that behavior as the criterion for access to more advanced curriculum. It's the old chicken and egg dilemma. Gifted children don't want to work on things they already know how to do, but until they dutifully demonstrate excellent completion of grad-level work, the children can't "earn their way" into more advanced, appropriate, and interesting coursework.

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When students experience appropriate classroom expectations and environments - classrooms that teach to their own level and pace - problems with the above expectations disappear. When there is enough real learning to do, gifted children appear more cooperative, feel more respect for their teachers, and find their natural talkative and humorous propensities appreciated rather than viewed as behavioral problems.

- Dr. Deborah Ruf, "Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind"

This Catch 22 is simultaneously the most understandable and most frustrating aspect of enrolling gifted children in the public school environment.

School is not entirely about learning knowledge and information. Perhaps initially that was the case, but now there is much more expected of public schools. Children are also expected to learn how to get along with others, how to be respectful, how to organize themselves, how to manage their time, etc. Intellectually, teachers give high marks to those who not only learn the material but manage their time effectively so as to complete assignments and are willing to demonstrate what they have learned, which tends to be the purview of those who are people pleasers. This is not necessarily indicative of gifted children, and many gifted children are not people pleasers.

A child who is not demonstrating these abilities is generally viewed as having something wrong. They may be learning disabled, ADHD, autistic, or have any number of issues that could disrupt their learning. If nothing can be found to affect their ability to learn, they often receive labels like oppositional defiance disorder or similar.

I have often wondered how many of these label issues would be resolved if the children were challenged in school. Usually the normal response to a child like this is to assume the problem stems from a child who cannot cope with the environment. They leave these children in the same classroom but try a series of measures to make it easier for them to complete the homework.

It would be truly novel if these children were actually accelerated instead. I suspect it would make it much easier to tell who is bored and who is actually suffering from one of the afflictions mentioned above.

The problem is, as mentioned above, it seems paradoxical to accelerate children that already have difficulties in school. It seems logical that a child who is having issues learning basic topics would have more or worse issues when learning more challenging material. At it's heart, the paradox is born from the notion that the children can or should be changed, not the environment. When there is a mismatch between environment and child, it is usually the child that is expected to change, not the environment. In the public schools and many private schools, this is perhaps very realistic. It is difficult for a school to change the environment, but it is easy to medicate a child. On the other hand, schools often overestimate how difficult it would be to create a more challenging environment for children.