Does private school allow grade skipping?
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Anonymous
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Private schools don't like grade skipping. In fact just the opposite. They encourage redshirting in the lower years - so many 6 year old kindergartener boys! - and they have birthday cutoff dates that are way out of wack. They justify their cutoff dates for a variety of reasons, but I've come to the conclusion that they are intended to have an classes that have more older kids than those in public. It's totally stupid social engineering, but it is what it is.
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Anonymous
Such a tired response and simply not true in regards to what OP is talking about. No, most children at Sidwell, GDS the Cathedral schools and the like are profoundly gifted. No they are not. OP, NO, most will not allow skipping grades or even working at a higher level than the class in even one subject. You will have to supplement with programs out of school. Or get your child into a program for gifted students, which can be better in public school sometimes. |
Anonymous
| When our son was at Beauvoir we inquired about skipping a grade, because they would have allowed him to at MoCo public school. Beauvoir told us they had only skipped a child ahead 1 time in 30 years and it was a huge mistake. Even though they agreed that our kid probably could have skipped a grade and been fine academically, they were worried about the social aspects of it. |
Anonymous
| Baltimore private schools have pre-first. I toured Gilman when my son was 4. The admissions people had never met him but when I told them his birthday was in April, they said they would recommend him for pre-k instead of kindergarten. WTH? He was reading on a 2nd/3rd-grade level by his 5th birthday. Ridiculous. |
Anonymous
Maybe not skip a grade but we were able to join the next grade for reading and math. Came from a test-in magnet elementary school out of state. |
Anonymous
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Profoundly gifted is usually considered to be an IQ of 160+, but it's usually thought of as encompassing more than just what's measured as a high IQ. If you think of it in terms of standard deviations on the IQ test, PG kids are as far apart from average 100-IQ kids as intellectually-impaired kids with an IQ of 40.
You will not usually get grade-skipping in either public or private school for bright, high-achieving children capable of working two grades ahead during the elementary-school years. This is the cohort for which tends not to remain significantly ahead by the middle-school years, as a significant amount of this high achievement is often driven by an optimized/enriched environment in high-SES families. There is solid evidence that acceleration -- preferably subject-matter acceleration, but where necessary, whole-grade acceleration -- is beneficial for children who are PG. Such children are often more at ease with their intellectual peers (older children) than they are with children their own age. They may exhibit a maturity and inner life that is more consistent with those older children than with their peers (though they may have some specific aspects in which they remain age-appropriate or even immature). The evidence says that whole-grade acceleration actually, contrary to popular opinion, does not lead to worse social/emotional outcomes, when acceleration is properly implemented. For whole-grade acceleration, the evidence-based recommendation is that the best approach is to allow the child to start K early -- i.e. with the next cohort up. In most cases, depending on the child's birthdate, they may not be hugely younger than the other kids in their class (especially if there's no rampant redshirting). The key difference is that subject acceleration is often limited to just math, or just math and reading; children do other subjects, such as social studies and science, with their age peers. This is useful for keeping a child with their cohort, but leads to frustration when other subjects are taught at below the child's intellectual ability. (Imagine telling a high schooler to stay engaged in a class with a third-grade science class. They're going to be bored and think it's a waste of their time, right?) However, PG children may be reading at at 6th grade level or more by K -- they're not just a grade or two ahead. This doesn't mean they comprehend everything they read, as they might not have the general background to understand the context of what they're reading, nor the emotional maturity to understand the motivations of adults in a story. But, for instance, they might be capable of reading and understanding high school science textbooks. Nysmith says they're able to accommodate math acceleration of up to four grades. Reading they say they can do as well, but when we spoke to them, acceleration in non-math subjects seemed to be much more nebulous, whereas in math it was clearly structured and routine. Nysmith does not do whole-grade acceleration. It seems more geared towards studious high-achievers than quirky highly and profoundly gifted kids. Feynman is willing to accommodate fairly arbitrary levels of math and reading acceleration, and they are also willing to consider whole-grade acceleration for children that they believe would benefit from an older peer group, and a higher "baseline" level of work (for instance, the children do science with their age-peer group). They clearly "get it" when dealing with gifted, not just high-achieving bright, children, who may be highly quirky and asynchronous, with profound strengths as well as possibly profound weaknesses. |
Anonymous
| +1. Only a very small school can manage the very different needs of these kids. Feynman does a great job. But I do also agree with the question from another poster about what OPs child really needs. 2 grades up is not indicative of a PG child. |
Anonymous
| OP, have you had the child tested? |
Anonymous
| If you're in the DMV area, then no. At least 30% of the kids in these schools will be where your child is. He will be one of many in a class who are advanced. |
Anonymous
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For what it’s worth I went to HYP and knew exactly one person who had ever skipped a grade. And later in graduate school at Yale I had a friend who was designated as “profoundly gifted” as a child, and skipped at least four grades and graduated from University of Colorado with his BS at age 17. He then ended up at graduate school at Yale with the rest of us, where he was not any more gifted than the average Yale PhD student and had had the unfortunate situation of never having had a “normal” childhood or adolescence. I always felt so bad for him, and he constantly expresses how he wished his parents had known more about what other families with smart kids did (they don’t typically skip grades if they’re well off - they challenge in other ways).
I think the question about WHY you would accelerate a child is the right one. A good private school will engage and challenge a child by going deeper, not by accelerating. Those kids can then rise to the top of their class and end up at a top college and top graduate program - all without denying them the opportunity to have an otherwise normal childhood with his or her peers. |
Anonymous
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The entire concept of "grade skipping" is based on a presumption that there is a series of items that one must master, lockstep, before advancing to the next grade. In public schools, this is basically true, and when one teacher is teaching 25+ students, they are all learning the same material at the same time.
Many private schools have 15 or fewer students per class, with one or sometimes two teachers and also with many additional specialists. In that circumstance, a child's progress can be accelerated without skipping a grade, and a child can be challenged in one area (math, for example) without grouping the child with older kids in other classes (like art and music or social studies, where skipping a grade doesn't necessarily help the gifted). In other words, private schools typically do not skip grades because they don't need to in order to accommodate extremely gifted students. They also tend to go deeper rather than climb faster - and they know that ultimately this approach is advantageous in college admissions (and in life imo). |
Anonymous
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DC, my second grader also does 4th-5th level math in 2nd grade and takes outside math enrichment. Math programs like Art of Problem Solving and Russian School of Math introduce algebra to first graders even.
If you want gifted programming for your child, you should consider public. Grade skipping comes with certain social conequences and is even a factor if your child wants to do sports (will have certain developmental disadvantages) so you should think about it very carefully. |
Anonymous
I think you should save your pity for someone else. That child would have been bored to tears if they had not worked ahead. They don't know for themselves how awful it would have been to be stuck with well off high achievers working ahead one grade level instead of actually working at their capability. Sidwell does not meet the needs of a highly gifted child. Feyman and schools that actually cater to this very small group will. High achieving students--yes, even at Yale, gasp!-- are not all highly gifted and never will be. Many there just work really hard. |
Anonymous
| Yes, my DS skipped an elementary grade in a boarding school out of state. He's doing fine socially and is still top of the class academically. Most schools here in the area, however, don't encourage it. |
Anonymous
This is correct. Most students are above average in the 70-90 percentile. For kids 99 and above, their peers are few and far between. And rightfully so! There's just not that many of them. Summer camps specialized in interests can be particularly helpful for the PG child. |