Reply to If they accelerated math, did you regret it later?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s less about how hard the subject is, and more about how organized they are in middle school. If the kid won’t do his homework or study with any basic effort then it stinks to miss out on what for most bright kids should be a straightforward A for the high school transcript. [/quote]

Hard disagree. I'm with the poster who said there's a brain development step you cannot predict that helps students process higher level math concepts. The same kind of brain development I firmly think also helps with computer science concepts like recursion. Pushing those too early is just painful and doesn't accomplish much, where as after the brain development step they are easy.[/quote]

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I also don't understand why one would opt to make a child waste a year repeating pre-algebra when they've already mastered it, just in case their brain isn't sufficiently developed for higher level math.  Wouldn't it make more sense to advance the child forward, but then slow things down or give them more time with the material when they do hit that roadblock?  I guess I'm seeing it this way:  If you have a kid who has mastered pre-algebra in 6th and is ready to advance in 7th, these cases seem logical:
A.  You put the kid in Algebra in 7th, and the kid sails through all high school math with no issues.
B.  You put the kid in Algebra in 7th.  The kid does fine until hitting a road block later.  You slow the math down and do tutoring, remediation, repeating a year, jumping down to regular, taking calc AB and then BC the next year.  In this case, the child spends more time with the material that they are struggling to understand.
C.  You make the kid repeat pre-algebra.  They do fine with later math, but are behind the kids in group A and at best on the same level as the kids in group B.
D.  You make the kid repeat pre-algebra.  They still struggle with later math, because they always were doing to do so.

People seem to view acceleration as B vs. C when it's really A or B vs. C or D.  I'd pick A or B any day of the week over C or D.  [/quote]

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