Hylin

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2007 : July : 3

Hylin
By josephineg

No need to have mixed feelings, because the choice can be based on research, not feelings at all.

You wrote: "I had a kinder sent to my 1st grade class mid-year because she was too smart."

No one is too
smart, Hylin. No one.

You wrote: "She was just too smart."

No one is too smart, Hylin. No one.

Maybe she should have been skipped several grades, not "a grade" as you suggest.

One type of acceleration (one of 18) is early admission to first grade.

See: "A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students", The Templeton

National Report on Acceleration. Downloadable at: http://www.nationdeceived.org.

"Research continuously demonstrates the positive impacts of the various forms of acceleration. Yet the educational establishment, especially at elementary and middle school levels, remains skeptical based on the implications of ruined scope and sequence charts and ungrounded fears of hampering social-emotional adjustment." (p. 10)

"Some gifted students have a difficult choice to make. Should they excel academically even if this might mean social rejection? Or should they minimize their abilities to gain peer acceptance? Amazingly, researchers have found that the pressure to dumb down can start in the early years of elementary school. By middle school, some gifted students have gone underground." (p. 42)

All the best.