Skip the smart kids

Schools should let many more students skip a grade, argues Jonathan Barazzutti in City Journal.

Only about 1 percent of U.S. students skip a grade, even though 15 percent to 45 percent "enter late-elementary classes performing at least one year ahead of standard academic expectations," he writes. It's unfair to students who are likely to be "bored and disengaged." And it's expensive to taxpayers.

Many fear that students who skip a grade will be social outcasts, he writes, but there's evidence that bright students have an easier time relating to classmates who are also academically advanced.

Only 29 percent of elementary and middle schools offer students the option of skipping a grade, Barazzutti writes. Many districts discourage acceleration.

Only a few states require schools to give advanced students a chance to move more quickly: For Washington requires a whole-grade acceleration option in high school and Texas requires the option in K-12.

"Students who prove they can thrive above their current grade level should have the opportunity to move ahead," writes Barazzutti. "States should mandate that school districts offer it as an option for advanced students, prioritizing excellence and opportunity over uniformity."

Of course, skipping a grade has its limits. Students who are ahead are often many years ahead academically. I tested at the 12th-grade level in reading when I was in fifth grade. Moving to sixth grade a year earlier wouldn't have made much difference, and I certainly wasn't ready for high school. Reading surreptitiously in class, and then tracking in high school, saved my sanity.

"Gifted" programs have been under fire for enrolling too many middle-class white and Asian-American students. But the push for "equity" hasn't helped disadvantaged students, and it's driving affluent families away from urban districts that can't afford to lose enrollment.

Parents have more choices now. Ignoring the achievers -- or asking them to tutor their classmates -- is not going to work. I wonder if it's time to stop asking teachers to "differentiate" instruction for students with an ever wider range of achievement levels.

San Francisco's public schools will offer eighth-grade algebra to students who are prepared for the challenge, reports Dana Goldstein in the New York Times. The option was dropped 12 years ago in hopes that keeping all students in the same math classes until 10th grade would improve "equity."

But the plan didn't boost the number of students enrolling in advanced math, as hoped, she writes. "Wide racial gaps remained." The most motivated and well-off parents paid for summer and after-school math courses to enable them to reach calculus by 12th grade.

San Francisco “tried to achieve equity not by raising the floor, but by lowering the ceiling,” said Thomas S. Dee, a Stanford economist who studied the policy with colleagues.

Ah, "equity." It reminds me of what Ralph Waldo Emerson allegedly said: "The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."