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I went to high school at age 11.
Within two years, I had run out of math and Spanish classes there, so I walked from my public school campus to nearby Lewis and Clark College to study differential equations, symbolic logic, and the plays of 1830s Spain.
People often ask me if it was strange to be a newly minted teenager in classrooms full of college upperclassmen. The truth is, no one knew my age unless I told them. I was just the overenthusiastic, kind of young-looking kid in the front row.
Without the chance to skip grades, I would have completely disengaged from school. Even three years accelerated in all subjects and five or six in some, I found the pace of many classes infuriatingly slow. Only the open-ended exploration of high school and college courses kept me from boredom.
My parents and school district eventually got my placement right, but landing there was not easy. Our family incurred huge costs in time and money to persuade my public school to allow me to accelerate, and then to ensure I could access appropriate content. At one point, we hired a school advocate to pressure the district to meet my needs. Then there were testing fees (for the SCAT at age 7, the SAT at ages 9 and 12) and course costs for my online and college classes. My parents missed days of work for countless meetings with administrators.
But acceleration shouldn’t depend on a family’s available time and income. That’s part of the impetus behind the new nonprofit I run, National Math Stars. We work to ensure that mathematically extraordinary students, regardless of resources, have the acceleration and enrichment they need. We help these students access paths to becoming inventors, researchers, and leaders.
During the 2023-24 school year, we supported a pilot cohort of 12 mathematically advanced students from across the country. Many are students of color; most come from low-income households. (We worked with Art of Problem Solving, a math enrichment provider, and the Partnership for LA Schools to identify extraordinary math students for this inaugural cohort.)
We’ve worked with families to advocate for whole-grade or subject-specific acceleration. We have made good progress, as districts have granted permission for students to skip grades and join math classes alongside older students. (Other organizations like the Davidson Institute provide similar advocacy support to families of profoundly gifted students.)
During these advocacy conversations, schools have requested a dizzying array of parent-provided evidence, such as IQ test scores and records of advanced coursework outside of school, to initiate a conversation about acceleration.
Expensive data gathering and outside help need not be a prerequisite. In one extraordinary instance, it wasn’t. Our student David’s school proactively recognized his talents, coordinated IQ testing for him, and presented acceleration options to his family. He skipped fourth grade. Since even that didn’t meet his math needs, his school arranged and paid for an online math class, which it allowed him to take during regular math time.
I wish more schools would do the same.
Many schools resist whole-grade acceleration due to social concerns. Whether grade-skipping will be positive or negative for a student’s socio-emotional development is highly individual, but for me, it was hugely positive. Each time I skipped a grade, I built stronger friendships in my new class. Research has shown that, in aggregate, concerns about harm to students’ psychological well-being are misplaced. A 35-year longitudinal study, as well as shorter-term analyses, show neutral to positive effects. Tools like the Integrated Acceleration System can help districts determine if acceleration is the right choice for a particular student.
Schools I talk to tend to be more philosophically comfortable with subject-specific acceleration, but they raise practical concerns around scheduling and “capping out,” or exhausting all available classes. I frequently hear questions like:
If fourth and fifth grade math don’t meet at the same time, how can we let a fourth grader take fifth grade math?
What will that student do next year, if sixth grade is on a different campus?
And what will they do in high school if they finish calculus sophomore year but need three years of math credits to graduate?
These are tricky questions, but they’re solvable with a little flexibility and creativity.
My own educational journey involved a range of solutions: taking online courses in the school library during math time, working on self-designed or teacher-designed independent study materials during class in lieu of traditional coursework, and walking to a nearby campus for courses at my level.
Options have only expanded since my school years.
The breadth of engaging, challenging online courses has grown. (Art of Problem Solving is a favorite among our students, both for its advanced versions of the standard curriculum and for its more unusual offerings, such as number theory.) In addition, the rise of video conferencing means some students can Zoom into higher-level math courses, reducing transportation barriers.
There’s no one right way. My plea to schools and districts is this: Consider whole-grade and subject-specific acceleration as a tool for meeting your students’ needs. Look out for students for whom it might be the right choice, and initiate the conversation with their parents. Try to eliminate financial and logistical barriers to making the right placement decisions. Reducing the burden on parents can make access to acceleration more equitable.
I loved my high school years. Although I had the option to go to college full-time even earlier, I chose to spend four years in high school because it met my social needs and, with accommodations, my academic needs, too.
I want that joyful experience for all profoundly gifted students.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Related:
Personalized Learning: eSN Innovation Roundtable
Agency and self-direction: Giving students a voice
For more news on gifted students, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching hub
