Encouraging Gifted Children

My kids attend public elementary school in a state that just cut the number of instructional days by 17 per school year in order to help balance the budget. Unfortunately, education is an easy target when it comes to cutting costs, which are usually caused by overpaid administrators. Children are clearly being short changed in public schools across America, and quite often the best and brightest students are not being challenged in the classroom which leads to boredom, apathy, and a feeling among students of ‘why bother.’ The 2004 publication of A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students was seen as a watershed event in the national debate about acceleration and gifted students. This two part publication highlights the disparity between the scholarly research on acceleration and the educational policies and practices that often run contrary to the research.

How can we help our kids excel academically when they are not encouraged to do so at school? Skipping a grade level is not always an option, and while it might alleviate boredom and foster advanced academics, it has associated social and developmental concerns. Teachers who are allowed to offer differentiated instruction where they can adapt lesson plans to accommodate different ability levels are far and few between.
The Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration has an excellent Questions and Answers forum, a few of which are highlighted here:

Should I accelerate my child? 

Research indicates that acceleration is a social and academic success story; in many cases, it is the right intervention for students whose needs are not met in age-grouped classrooms.
The more relevant question might be "what form of acceleration is most appropriate for my child?" For many people, acceleration is synonymous with grade skipping, although grade skipping is just one form of acceleration. Early entrance to kindergarten or 1st grade, dual enrollment in high school and college, and subject matter acceleration are different forms of acceleration that may work for some students.

Choosing an accelerative intervention requires careful consideration of many factors, and the type of acceleration that works well with one child may not work well with another. The support of family and friends, the student’s level of academic and social-emotional development, the student’s age and physical development, and the beliefs of local school personnel are all factors to consider. For example, students who skip grades need emotional maturity as well as academic ability in order to succeed. With single-subject acceleration, however, the more important criterion is academic ability, and social-emotional maturity may be less of a concern.

Will my accelerated child fit in socially and have friends? 

Parents and caregivers are deeply concerned about their child’s social and emotional health and want to ensure that their child has membership in a peer group. Many intellectually advanced children have experienced the social isolation that comes not from having a true intellectual peer in the same grade. Acceleration can benefit some children socially because it allows them to socialize with older peers who are more likely to share interests and are closer to the intellectual level of the accelerated child. For some children, acceleration may finally provide the opportunity to make a friend. The social fit of the child is a larger issue for grade skipping than for forms of acceleration that keep the child in the grade-level classroom (such as subject matter acceleration).

How important are the age and school grade of siblings when considering acceleration? 

An important rule of thumb in acceleration is that a student not be skipped into the same grade as an older sibling. Such a move will introduce the accelerated child into the social and academic territory of the older sibling. Even if a school offers more than one class at the given grade level or if the accelerated student could be moved to another school, acceleration into the same grade as an older sibling is not recommended.
Students who are not accelerated due to a sibling’s age or grade still need to be challenged, however. Alternative methods for increasing their academic challenge must be identified and implemented. One method that can be used is to pair the student with a mentor who works professionally in a field that is related to the student’s academic interest areas. Other ways to increase challenge can be found in books such as Re-Forming Gifted Education: Matching the Program to the Child (Rogers, 2002) and include participation in regional or national competitions based upon individual or group projects, through programs such as Destination Imagination™, Knowledgemaster, Invention Convention™, Math Olympiad, and Future Problem Solving. The key is to find ways to provide meaning, usefulness, and structure, and thereby motivation, to a student’s extended learning.

Are there support groups for parents and children who participate in various forms of acceleration? 

There are many websites that deal with issues of gifted children. A few popular sites developed by parents are:

http://www.gtworld.org
http://www.tagfam.org/
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/


These sites provide listserv and other resources for a variety of issues and concerns common to gifted children and their families. The Hoagies’ site has a section dedicated to personal stories and research on acceleration.

What are some of your solutions to helping your gifted child succeed?