Professional Documents
Culture Documents
What Do Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King JR
What Do Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King JR
Acceleration
Maureen Marron spends a lot of time thinking about how schools can meet the
needs of high-ability students. An associate research scientist at the Connie
Belin and Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and
Talent Development at the University of Iowa, Marron sees grade skipping as
just one option in an academic tool kit known as “acceleration.”
“Skipping a grade isn’t the answer for every gifted student,” Marron says.
“Acceleration means matching the curriculum to a student’s abilities. For one
student, that may mean grade skipping; for another, it may mean acceleration
in a single subject, like math; for other students, enrichment-based activities in
the classroom are all they need.” Other acceleration options for high-
performing children can include starting kindergarten early, taking AP courses
in high school, or fast-tracking to college.
But Marron and her colleagues at the Belin-Blank Center say there are far too
few acceleration opportunities for children in the U.S. today. It’s a situation they
call “a national scandal” in their comprehensive and highly regarded report, A
Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students.
According to their findings, “America’s school system keeps bright students in
line by forcing them to learn in a lock-step manner with their classmates.
Teachers and principals disregard students’ desires to learn more — much more
— than they are being taught.”
The fallout? “Highly gifted students who are bored and act out as a result, or
stop paying attention, or don’t attain the skills they need to succeed in college
and the workforce,” Marron says. “We’ve heard that American students are
falling behind students in other countries — what do we expect if we don’t give
these kids the tools they need to excel?”
A report by the National Association for Gifted Children echoes this concern,
warning that the lack of support for gifted children, “if left unchecked, will
ultimately leave our nation ill-prepared to field the next generation of
innovators and to compete in the global economy.”
Experts suggest a number of reasons why acceleration programs are not more
widely embraced by teachers and school administrators, including concern
about the social impacts of moving a child ahead, and a lack of familiarity with
acceleration on the part of teachers and administrators.
Government education policy may also play a role. A 2008 report by the Thomas
B. Fordham Institute found that, since the introduction of No Child Left Behind,
there have been achievement gains for low-performing students, but the
performance of high-ability students has stagnated. Teachers reported feeling
pressure to focus on their lowest-achieving students: 60 percent said low-
achieving students were the top priority at their school; only 23 percent said
that high-achieving students were a top priority. (Note: The report does not
establish a definitive causal link between No Child Left Behind and the
outcomes for low- and high-achieving students, but the timing of these trends
implies a connection).