Acceleration

Acceleration is a gift of time.

Acceleration is a way of providing for gifted students by letting them pass faster through school or at least part of the curriculum.

Typical forms of acceleration are:

• early admission to kindergarten, school or college,
• grade-skipping,
• subject-matter-acceleration.

All of these interventions and many others more, share the same idea:
Let students learn, when they are ready, regardless of their age.

Historically, acceleration is one of the oldest educational interventions for the gifted. In times schools were so small, students of different age were taught in the same classroom, every student moved at his or her own speed. Only when schools got bigger did the same-age classroom become the norm. 

Today parents and teachers alike, are sometimes unnecessarily sceptical toward acceleration, simply because they are not familiar with it. 

Acceleration if handled properly has many advantages. The most important are:

• highly effective for bright students,
• better personal maturity match with classmates,
• cost-effective for parents and society as a whole,
• able people can contribute to society's needs early.

Even though there are some concerns regarding the social-emotional status of accelerated students most of them are unfounded. However, it is important to assess a student's ability and need correctly before acceleration can take place. Some basic questions which need clarification are:

• Does the student want to be accelerated?
• Will the student be intellectually capable to cope with the demands of acceleration?
• What about other (developmental characteristics) such as emotional maturity, age and physical size?
• Will the student receive appropriate support?
• What are the parents ready to contribute?

Further Information

If you want to know more about what acceleration can do for your students and what types of acceleration are most commonly used (especially in the USA) read the following two reports from the "A Nation Deceived" Web site:

• A Nation Deceived - Volume 1: Summary of key points (82 pages, PDF, 2.2 MByte)
• A Nation Deceived - Volume 2: Scholarly support evidence (190 pages, PDF, 2.1)  

Sources:

• Colangelo, Nicholas & Assouline, Susan G. & Gross, Miraca U. M.: A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students - Volume 1; The Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development, Iowa 2004 
• Colangelo, Nicholas & Assouline, Susan G. & Gross, Miraca U. M.(ed.): A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students - Volume 2; ; The Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development, Iowa 2004 
• Iowa Acceleration Scale: A Guide for Whole-Grade Acceleration K-8 at Davidson Institute for Talent Development 

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Please address any suggestions, critic, and questions to mattgig@freesurf.ch.

Matthias Giger, April 2006 (Update: 26-04-2006)
www.gigers.com