Customer Reviews

Iowa Accleration Scale Manual

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This scale turns a subjective decision - grade acceleration - into an objective decision: "Exceptional candidate, good candidate, marginal candidate, or whole-grade acceleration is not recommended (but that means that single-subject acceleration, mentoring, enrichment or other alternatives should be considered).

The scale is thorough, and gives weight (more or less) to every factor that any parent, teacher or administrator has every considered, including size and motor coordination (which it finds a minor issue), behavior, social participation, both inside and outside school activities (separately counted - having outside activities that aren't affected helps a lot), even attendance, motivation, self-concept and attitude towards learning. All these items are considered together. And given the most weight is the ability and achievement tests, particularly in and out of grade level achievement tests.

The book concludes with 2 student analysis (one gets a two grade skip, and the footnotes mention that the skip actually took place 3 years ago and is very successful), the other does not get a mid-year skip he didn't want, but is recommended for an end-of-year skip review), and then 11 pages of great research citations on why whole-grade acceleration is a good and effective educational alternative, and another 8 pages of references.

When a school purchases this book, and uses this scale to make quantitative a decision process that used to be purely emotional, I think we will see far more appropriate use of whole-grade acceleration, and far more comfortable folks involved, from the parents to the district personnel to the student themselves.

While I would recommend that every teacher working with gifted students be familiar with and have within their toolkit the IAS, I do have some very specific concerns about it. First, it is designed only to deal with children requiring a single grade skip. Much research shows that many highly to profoundly gifted children, those that will benefit most from grade skipping, may require many grade skips during their school career. The questions on the IAS are designed to deal with only children considering their first skip. Though it could be used for additional skips, the section on developmental factors becomes less useful the more out of grade level the child becomes. The IAS also seems to be focused on skipping a single grade at a time, there do not seem to be any guidelines for skipping multiple grades.

Another concern I have is with the IAS is their absolute denial of skips when a sibling in the same grade or the receiving grade is involved. While this is certainly an issue that must be addressed carefully, because denying a grade skip where one is called for can be extremely damaging, the cut and dried "never do this" approach seems to me to be wrong. I think that directing people to take special care in these instances instead of just rejecting the skip out of hand would be more appropriate. Also, the IAS does not address at all the issue of a child skipping past a sibling, another issue that can arise with multiple grade skips.

Though it certainly doesn't take all the emotion out of the decision to whole grade accelerate a child, the IAS does give some framework, based on good research, to the process. I would recommend that every school district have the use of the IAS as part of its procedures for whole grade acceleration. Grade acceleration is one research proven, inexpensive way of meeting the needs of gifted kids. It is good to have a way to begin to quantify this difficult decision.