Adventures in Acceleration

Erin Morris Miller, PhD

(This blog was originally posted on the discontinued website, thegiftedscholar.com)

“Respond to your gifted child’s needs at home and work with the teachers and administrators the best you can. Be your child’s advocate.”

The advice is simple, and I have given it many times. Simple but hard. And frustratingly, no less hard for me, even with a doctorate specializing in the psychology and education of gifted children. Well, the home part is easier. The school part? Let me tell you a story…

My daughter had an exasperating seventh grade math year. She was in pre-Algebra and her teacher had recently moved from teaching upper elementary to teaching seventh graders. The teacher’s discipline strategy was to express that the students’ unproductive behavior made her disappointed. That may have worked with fifth graders, but these seventh graders didn’t give a damn about pleasing the teacher. My daughter had expressed to the teacher that she was bored and was repeatedly told that the next unit would be more challenging. It was not.

Stock Photo of girl pointing

Overall, having highly educated parents works to my kid’s advantage. Her home is a smorgasbord of enrichment. Our entire lifestyle revolves around intellectual discovery. I am cool and calm in the face of intensity and give research-based advice regarding her social-emotional life. But I am not as sure that this is an advantage when it comes to working with her school. I know too much for a school district’s comfort. I am not satisfied with “trust us, we are the experts” because I bring my own expertise to the situation. I can call bullshit, and follow up with research and statistics. This does not make me a popular presence at meetings. The power of a school system rests on parents’ trust in the administrators’ expertise. Questioning that expertise can make administrators defensive. Did you ever wonder what happened to the child who exclaimed that the Emperor Had No Clothes?

He got gaslighted.

But more importantly, my daughter knows too much. She reads what I write. She reads the books on giftedness that I review. She reads books on intelligence and the neuroscience of individual differences. And essential to this story… she read Developing Academic Acceleration Policies: Whole Grade, Early Entrance, and Single Subject.

She wanted to be accelerated in math.

From my perspective, this was a simple process. She works over the summer studying Algebra. She takes an assessment at the end of the summer. If she shows sufficient mastery, she is placed in Geometry for the next year. (It is important to note here that the middle school already had three future eighth graders who would be crossing the street to the high school to take Geometry.) I sent the central office and principal an email asking what the process would be if my daughter completed an online Algebra course over the summer. And thus began one of the more comical set of email exchanges of my life.

In summary:

Central Office: We do not recommend or allow students to learn Algebra over the summer.

Me: I am confused. You do not own Algebra. How do you plan to stop her from learning Algebra?

Central Office: She will not get credit.

Me: How do homeschooled children get placed?

Central Office: They are assessed and given credit on the basis of the findings.

Me: Ok, do that.

Central Office: Fine, then.

"No One Can Own Algebra"

I could write an entire blog just on that set of email exchanges. But this is my daughter’s story. She enrolled in an online course, learned a lot of new math over the summer, and it made her happy. But as I suspected, she was busy with camps, swim team, vacation trips, science experiments, and hanging with her friends. She did not finish the whole course. So, did she learn all there was to learn about Algebra? Probably not.

However, acceleration was not the only intervention in my daughter’s tool box. She had read over my shoulder as I worked with an author editing his manuscript on curriculum compacting. And she wanted in. And so, one week before school, I sent an email asking if the Algebra teacher would consider curriculum compacting for my daughter with the promise that I would provide resources to make it work. My request was sent to the central office and…no response. I followed up and received no response from the central office. School was about to start. What should I do?

What would you do?

And here comes the most important part of this blog. The school’s responses to my requests don’t actually matter for a child like my daughter. She doesn’t really need them. As long as the school provides a basically competent education and makes at least minimal effort at providing enrichment for gifted kids, she is fine. She has every home environment advantage one can have. She is buffered by the luck of being born into a family with material and intellectual resources. She will learn all of Algebra and go on to progress as far in math as she chooses. I am not feeding into the myth that gifted students will do fine on their own, because she isn’t on her own. She has her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all facilitating her development.

Julia age 2 1/2. This face with the brows drawn together and skeptical eyes became a staple of her personality. This particular picture was in the newspaper.

What my daughter did need was a sense of agency in her own education. I asked the Algebra teacher to meet with my daughter one-on-one after the second day of school so that she could express her desire for challenge and explain why she was frustrated. The teacher

listened to my daughter and my daughter listened to the teacher. My daughter agreed to give her Algebra teacher the chance to challenge her without formal curriculum compacting.

My daughter will be fine. But I know there are many children in this school district and in this country who will not be fine. When I fight against policies and attitudes that hinder talent development, it is not for my own children’s personal gain. I think of the parents who accept a misguided pedagogy because it is cloaked in a veneer of expertise. I ache for the parents who accept that the naked emperor must be wearing clothes if everyone else is going along. And most importantly, I think of so many children for whom public school could be the determining factor in whether they are able to fulfill their potential. It is those children who are truly being hurt.

Postscript: I wrote this around 2018 and my daughter has since graduated from high school. She rolled into university as a STEM major with 20+ credits from Advanced Placement and Dual Enrollment courses. So, yes, she was fine.