A personal record: is acceleration worth the effort?

We have three children: a girl born in 1972, a boy born in 1975, and a girl born in 1979. The eldest is now 11 and has entered the eighth grade. She has studied French (in which her accent is beautiful) and algebra. She has developed self-aware friendships with three older girls and has never been happier. Her school history is typical of bright and compliant girls. (Lately she has, however, gratifyingly displayed both skepticism and a wry sense of humor.)

Our son's school history is also typical. He is a bright and not-very-compliant, active boy. At present, his measured ability is higher than his sister's, his achievement is equal to hers, and his grades are straight C's. (His unit mastery tests, however, sport A's and B's.) All his teachers have resisted the temptation to acknowledge his exceptional potential. His first grade teacher, in January, even put him in a pointed cap labeled "pokey." He did not return to school that year.

Our youngest child is not yet in school, but unlike her siblings, she has learned to read, write, and count to 100 before entering kindergarten. Were she to go to kindergarten she would learn only to relinquish her eagerness to read and to play with written symbols. Needless to say, we will not be sending her to kindergarten. Our state, however, has a new law which requires all children to attend kindergarten.

We have persisted working in and around education because we think pedagogy ought to have something to do with intellect, and we believe that children deserve to grow up in an atmosphere which holds thought and knowledge in high regard. We think this is part of cherishing children, and we do not believe it is incompatible in any sense with their healthy emotional development. It seems that these benefits, however, conflict dramatically with values held by schools. The achievement of literacy and rationalism, in a broad sense, is not a highly esteemed educational goal, even for bright children.

We have found that the more deeply we have become involved in education as a career, the more schools have found our advocacy efforts perplexing. As insiders, we are supposed to be accepting of the nuances of schooling. We are certainly not supposed to use our knowledge of pedagogy to influence our children's school programs. Nevertheless, without our advocacy, the minor adjustments that have promoted their academic growth early in their school careers would have come too late to be effective. Worse than that, the schools may very well have treated our son as if he were a hyperactive, learning disabled, or behavior disordered student.

What We Asked

Because we view our children's giftedness as verbal precocity, we believe that they can handle formal school learning at a more rapid pace than is normally allowed. In addition, we are skeptical of the degree to which typical gifted enrichment programs can offer either "systematic" or "substantive" cognitive instruction. From this perspective, we find that acceleration is appropriate for our children and others like them.

We knew that our first child had learned to read during the summer after first grade when she began devouring stacks of books--books by Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Roald Dahl, and the like. In second grade, though she had a sympathetic teacher, she was still in the second grade readers, while she began, at home, to read young adult fiction. During the year she became progressively more withdrawn, sulky, and almost cynical. She looked forward to weekends with longing. Because we were teachers, we knew exactly what was happening--many parents do, but are too insecure in their knowledge to act on their instincts. Our daughter was languishing intellectually for 6 long hours a day. By the end of the year her teacher had begun to wonder if she didn't need "professional psychological help." We did not think the problem was a persistent psychological conflict. The school already believed we were too "pushy."

Because gifted programs in our state are administered under special education, gifted children are accorded the same rights provided handicapped children under the progressive federal law (PL 94-142) of 1975. We referred our daughter for testing as a potentially gifted child. We intended to ask that she skip the third grade, if she were determined eligible for special education. We understood that this request might be considered all act of heresy.

And What We Got

Our daughter was tested in the hall. Nonetheless, she was found to be a gifted child eligible for an exceptional program. By this time, the principal knew of our intentions and had already expressed her extreme skepticism.

Because it was an option open to us, we chose to transfer our daughter to another system. The principal of the receiving school was frankly opposed to any form of acceleration, especially grade skipping, but was overridden by the central office staff. Our daughter did well academically in the new placement, but was no happier with her new peers. By the beginning of the next year (she was 8 entering the fifth grade) she was better accepted. At the end of her sixth grade year, we moved to a more urban area, where she was enrolled in a Catholic school committed to an academically advanced program.

Because of the comparative success of our daughter's acceleration, we started the work necessary to enroll our son early in school. He was tested privately in the summer, and the district agreed that his scores were well within the gifted range. The district was the same which had agreed to our daughter's grade skipping. However, the superintendency had changed hands, and both the principal and the central office staff were unsupportive. In fact, the central office staff now said acceleration was no longer approved by district policy! They subsequently failed, however, to produce any written policy statement to that effect.

We had a formal hearing, known as a "due process hearing" on the issue (we have since become due process hearing officers ourselves). Our son had to be retested, and the results of the previous testing were affirmed. The hearing officer, however, ruled that acceleration was inappropriate, erroneously noting that no professional testimony had been heard to substantiate the request. We appealed, citing the hearing transcript to prove that we had presented evidence of the appropriateness of the placement from no less than five experts!

The state reviewed our appeal and, belatedly, the summer after the request had been made, ruled that acceleration had to be considered during the coming year. In the process the state superintendent also ruled that it was appropriate to consider acceleration (early entry, specifically) when dealing with an identified gifted preschooler. All this contention did our son little good; but it did not harm him much since we were supportive, and ready to protect him.

When we moved to the state capital, the receiving school agreed to a crossgrade placement in a split grade class. That is, he was placed in a classroom that had some second grade students and some third grade students. In this classroom he worked in the third grade math book (an accelerative strategy) and in the second grade language arts materials. We talked to our son and told him to expect hard work. His achievement was about average at the beginning of the year. Throughout the year we monitored his progress and implemented additional instruction (mainly in reading) at home. At the end of the year his achievement was at about the 90th percentile for his grade placement, grades of C for classroom work notwithstanding. These results pleased us, and our son too was pleased that his hard work had paid off. He felt better about himself as a student.

We do not quite know what to expect with our youngest child. She will be evaluated shortly. This district has a policy that enables it to deal with requests for acceleration, and we understand its details. Still, our experience here has been that acceleration is frowned on, that action depends more on personnel than on policy, and that the need of bright children to be accelerated is not recognized as a matter for special education. We are however, confident that, with our support, our children are equal to the obstacles.

Is It Worth It?

There is no doubt in our minds that, for our children, acceleration has been worth the effort. We think that it should be considered for all gifted children. Whether or not it is implemented depends on several factors. Some of these have to do with the child, some with the school, and some with the parents. The decision to accelerate is a matter of judgment. Part of that judgment ought to be the responsibility of parents. Parents should have the right to veto any proposal.

Children

Children for whom acceleration is considered should evidence academic preparedness. For a grade skipping arrangement the child should be performing in the higher level curriculum as well as the children in the receiving group. One writer in the field (Christopherson, 1981) says that social and physical measurements can be substantially lower than the average for the receiving group. Social and physical characteristics, he says, are relatively unimportant. With support, children adjust to their new surroundings. Our experience seems to suggest the truth of this proposition.

Schools

Schools obviously need to agree to proposed accelerated placements. Ideally, they should be supportive. However, as our history may suggest, strong school support is not necessary, and even strong opposition need not undermine the effectiveness of acceleration. If the receiving teacher is inarticulately or openly hostile, however, parents should proceed cautiously. The receiving teacher is the person the child will associate with most closely. If the receiving teacher cannot at least tentatively endorse the proposed placement, then parents will be better off looking for other options.

Parents

Some parents will find the idea of acceleration unsavory. Such parents usually feel, in concert with most educators, that "socialization" is more important than academic challenges.

What these parents usually want is an enrichment program that does not jeopardize their children by making them look in any way unusual.

Enrichment programs do single out bright children, but they usually do not give them what they are good at. Bright children are good at academic learning, but enrichment programs have a strong social and emotional emphasis. In the regular program, where they spend most of their time, bright children continue to do work that is pointless for them. In fact they are taught to believe that what everyone calls "learning" is boring.

Acceleration is worth the effort. It is not ideal, but it is probably necessary in most cases, as Leta Hollingworth noted in 1926. Acceleration is an adequate tool to adjust the lockstep instructional sequence for bright children. Interested parents and teachers need to implement if for this reason alone. Acceleration should, moreover, appeal to those in the public and in the educational community who believe that literacy and rationalism are the proper aims of schooling.

Postscript: Craig Howley writes this update on his three children in 2002.

The eldest graduated from college at the age of 17 (majored in psychology). She had been the (straight) co-president of the Lambda Society (which decided it needed a straight and a gay president), among her other activities. She moved to Nashville and worked as a pharmacy assistant, then on a sociology graduate degree at Temple---deciding to leave her doctoral program and have kids. She now works as an educational evaluator. Her kids are fabulous, 2 and 5. A wiser parent then we were, we think.

Our son (next eldest) struggled in school, always an outcast, and at about 10th grade announced that he was going to college early. The local university had a program that made this possible--if he could score in the 85th percentile on the ACT as a 10th grader, which he did, much to our surprise. College was a much better place for him. He finished an art program last year, and now lives in Brooklyn, paints devotedly, and holds body and soul apart working in an art store.

The youngest, also an outcast, had a tough acceleration experience in a Catholic school, where she violated all sorts of expectations, but hung on through the year. She then attended a variety of public schools, never really plugging into academic work. She announced midway through her senior year that she, too, was dropping out into college. After proving herself not serious about attending college her first two years, she took time out, working various odd jobs. When she did return to school, she got serious, and finished up with literature prizes and the like.

None of our children finished high school and all had to demonstrate their high school level knowledge on the GED before the colleges would agree to award a degree--successful coursework notwithstanding. We just love to say that all our kids are high school dropouts. They are all attuned to intellectual matters and believe that life is hard work and that it can be immensely rewarding and immensely frustrating by turns.

Dabbling with the boundaries of what is expected in schooling--with what is normal--with what is viewed as proper, lends itself to learning what one (kids and parents) believes in, how success is born of failure, and what a tremendous imposition on thoughtfulness and authenticity conventional wisdom can be. Our kids seem to have turned out to be the kind of friends we like and see a lot. Their story continues, and none of them regrets--or at least none of them says they regret--their decisions to violate the lockstep. We learned a lot, too and we would affirm what we wrote 18 years ago in the article about the kids. We love them like crazy, still.

REFERENCES

Christopherson, S. (1981). Developmental placement in the regular school program. Gifted Child Today,19 , 40-41

Hollingworth, L. (1926). Gifted children: Their nature and nurture. New York: Macmillan.

Originally published in Roeper Review 8(1), September 1985, pp. 43-45

Guest Editors' Comments on A Personal Record: Is Acceleration Worth the Effort?

In this article, Craig and Aimee Howley, educators in the field of gifted education and parents of three children, describe their experience of advocating on behalf of their own gifted children. They believed that the education their children received should be dictated by the children's current ability and achievement rather than conformity to chronological norms. As educational insiders, they felt some obligation to accept school values; however, they found that they needed to be persistent advocates for their children and to protect them from being mistreated as problematic students when they became bored with schoolwork they had already mastered.

The Howleys' belief that acceleration was appropriate for their verbally precocious children is rooted in their skepticism about the effectiveness of enrichment programs, which they believe cannot offer "systematic and substantive cognitive instruction." From their experience, it seems that whether a child receives acceleration depends more on people than on policy. Support from the district superintendent and school principals played a very important role in the decision to provide their children with acceleration.

Howley and Howley list some important factors that need to be considered before a child is accelerated. First, children considered for acceleration should be academically prepared; this is more important than social and physical characteristics. Second, the support of school personnel, especially the receiving teacher, is essential. Third, parents need to understand the limitations of enrichment programs for their gifted children, which, Howley and Howley believe, focus more on the emotional and social domains.

Howley and Howley have a unique perspective as both educators and parents. As such, their experiences and the conclusions they have drawn from them have a special claim on our attention.

At the time of this article's original publication, Craig B. Howley (MA), and Aimee A. Howley (MA), were writers and taught education courses in a liberal arts college. They were completing a textbook on gifted pedagogy. Craig Howley (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~howleyc/howleyc.htm) presently co-directs the ACCLAIM Research Initiative at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio and is director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools at AEL, Inc. (Charleston, West Virginia). His current research projects include studies of school size, rural school busing, and mathematics education in rural places. Dr. Howley is currently working on a book manuscript with Aimee Howley and others, critiquing developmentalism as a school ideology. Aimee Howley currently serves as chair of the Educational Studies Department at Ohio University, where she also coordinates and teaches in the Educational Administration program. Her most recent research considers the effects of educational policies and practices on schools (especially rural schools) and communities. On-going scholarship, especially with colleagues Craig Howley and Edwina Pendarvis, focuses on the role of intellect (and intellectual purpose) in U.S. schools.