Did you ever skip a grade (1st-11th)?

When my brother was little New Hampshire had a program called Readiness, which was for six-year-olds that were not deemed mature enough for first grade. He had untreated ADHD of the hyperactive-impulsive sort, so that’s where the school put him with our parents’ consent. This made him a year older than the kids in his first through fifth grade classes.

He’s a very bright guy, however, and eventually our parents decided that they believed in ADHD medication after all, so when we moved to take care of our great grandmother, he got tested by the school and it was recommended that he go into seventh grade instead of sixth. He was delighted and did great.

He also thought that it was awesome that he skipped a grade and I didn’t.

A few years ago my mom was recounting his glee at this achievement and said that she and dad had only agreed because he was a year older than his classmates, not already one of the youngest kids in his grade like I had been…

There was something in the way she said it that sounded a bit strange, so I impulsively asked her if she was saying that it had been suggested that I skip a grade too.

Twice, it turns out.

If I hadn’t asked point blank I guess I never would have known!

So how about you? Did you ever skip a grade?

  • Yes
  • No (it never came up that I know of)
  • No (it was suggested and my parents declined)

0 voters

I didn’t vote because I skipped twelfth grade, so I did skip a grade but not one of the grades in the thread title. I was thrilled and relieved to go to college right out of my junior year, but I know this isn’t what you were looking for.

When I started first grade, it was apparent that I was well ahead of the other kids, and so the next year the school put me in a sped-up program where you did second and third grade work. If you could keep up, you went to 4th the following year, which I and 3 others did. What was weird was they didn’t tell us this - it was just 2nd grade, what did I know? At the end of the year, they told us we were moving to 4th grade.

Oddly enough, 50 years later someone from that class told me our fourth grade class was also advanced, though it wasn’t intended to skip us ahead a year. My grandparents (who had a low opinion of “book smarts”) never mentioned this.

I voted yes. Except it was the lil’wrekker.
She went to a very small elementary school. The K and 1st were taught in the same room by one teacher and 2 aides.
The lil’wrekker was doing K work while listening in to the 1st graders lessons.
Her teacher pushed to have her move on over.
We agreed as she was already reading before she started school.
When she starts feeling sorry for herself she laments our decision.
She did very well academically. And I think she was fine socially.
She says it’s bad enough to be the baby of the family, but being the youngist person in your class is just a slap in the face.
She can be a brat, sometimes. Such babyish behavior. Tsk. Tsk.

First and Eighth grade, NYC.
But to be fair, many here skipped 8th grade because of the SP program.

My parents campaigned to have me skip a grade-- they tried to get me into kindergarten early, then tried to get me skipped for several years, until someone finally had the guts to say to their faces “She’s bright, but she’s immature. It would be a disaster. She could handle the classwork, but she’s already struggling socially, and it would be a demoralizing experience for her. Her classwork would probably suffer because she’d be so unhappy.” Thank gawd for that teacher. I know she was right.

Skipping was sort of a tradition in my family, though. My maternal grandmother skipped third grade; my father started early, AND skipped second grade; my mother started early, and had a summer birthday, so she was a year ahead from K on, and more than 18 months younger than many of the kids. Her sibs started early too, but they had a November birthday, so it wasn’t as big a deal (to hear my mother tell it). Anyway, this was why my parents (particularly my mother) were so obsessed with it.

However, it used to me much more common to either skip or be held back. I actually had to research this once in college, when I was studying teaching ESL. From the beginning of graded classrooms, until about the 1950s, fully half of all elementary students were held back at least once, and twice was not so uncommon (I don’t remember the number for twice, but it was high enough not to carry a huge stigma, especially since a lot of double-retentions were non-native English speakers). Single-grade skipping happened to about 25% of students, while something like 2% actually either skipped twice, or started early, then skipped once. Schools were much more casual about Ks starting early, because you had to pay for K, and the teacher could always reject the kid if it wasn’t working out.

What happened to change things mid-20th century was the institution on in-grade differentials. Which is to say that students within a grade could work on different levels, and at different paces.

Students still were “double-promoted” (that’s the term schools use) or were held back occasionally. Being held back was much more common. The “hold-back” rate was about 20%, and the “skip” rate was about 5%.

The real death knell to both skipping and holding back came in the mid 70s, with Public Law 94-142, “The Education of All Handicapped Children.” Children with learning disabilities, or problem like AD(H)D that were very often the causes of being retained were, first of all, diagnosed, and second of all, sent to newly established “Resource Centers” in schools where their problems could be remediated without them needing to repeat a grade. Occasionally, children with more serious problems, or children who did not get diagnosed in time, still repeated, but the retention rate dropped again.

Initial placement with slightly younger children, after one or two years in a self-contained classroom, also became a way in mainstreaming mildly retarded or autistic children, as well, so they appeared to have been retained, but they may actually have been following a plan all the time.

On the other end, programs that were not federally mandated, as were programs for handicapped children, but nonetheless, programs that prevented grade class jumping, were gifted and talented programs. A designated G&T child in the second grade in 1978 was a child who probably would have skipped that grade a generation earlier.

I don’t know how much things have changed for the better.

It’s certainly good for children who have specific problems, as opposed to global ones, to get specific help-- a dyslexic child isn’t going to learn to read no matter how many times he is held back, but a mildly delayed child, or even a mildly autistic one might actually fare better just waiting a year to enter, and then being a “regular” kid, rather than part of the special ed system. I certainly can think of a few particular kids I’ve seen who probably should have waited, instead of being saddled with aides, and being pulled out of the regular room twice a day.

And, my personal experience in G&T programs is that they’re not very interesting, and the kids in them get treated half the times as special snowflakes, and made to feel that they are “better” than the other kids, and half the time like they are pains in the asses of the teachers who have to come up with G&T curricula in addition the their regular work. The demands of G&T aren’t very high, but the expectations are, if that makes sense. The work isn’t necessarily challenging, but there’s more of it-- there’s a lot of “busywork.” And for a group of students you’d think would be highly motivated to learn, there’s very little in the way of student-generated content. I actually had one teacher come straight out and say (in the midst of a longer rant) that she expected better behavior from the “top” kids, and she deserved it, considering the extra work she put into teaching us. She did a lot of other things I didn’t like, and wasn’t a great teacher-- she ranted about twice a week. I found out years later that she had a PhD, and that’s how she ended up as a G&T teacher.

Anyway, a kid nowadays, in order to be double-promoted, and I’m speaking now as someone who has been on the teacher’s end of things (I was an educational interpreter/classroom aide for 8 years in three different school, in two different school systems), a student has to be doing more than just advanced work. A student needs three things 1) to be doing such highly advanced work across all subjects that even G&T programs won’t serve the child’s needs; 2) to be mature beyond the child’s grade level in order to fit in socially, and be able to handle emotionally the demands of a higher grade; and 3) [this is the unspoken one] not be unusually small or on the very young end of birthdays for the current grade placement. This is for several reasons-- one is for the kid to fit in in PE class, one is to prevent the kid from being physically bullied, and one is due to legal issues of having a very young child in classes in high school. If a school ever does get a Sheldon Cooper, they will recommend placement in a private school. If that’s not possible, they play a shell game, where they send the child to classes with older kids, but officially keep the child registered in his or her age-appropriate grade. This way, though, the child can participate in “specials” (music & PE), and go to recess with his or her age cohorts. Also, the child can, for example, be a sixth grader who takes 8th grade algebra, and goes to the high school for Spanish classes, and possibly even takes a college class in something. If you ask me, “roaming age-retention,” is better than either double-promotion or G&T programs. It requires flexibility a lot of schools don’t have, though.

I knew one kid who was exceptional-- not quite Sheldon Cooper, but really brilliant, and also small for his age. He did get moved up one grade, but only one, then sent to the G&T school, which was a separate building, and THEN, was still bussed to another school for some classes with high school students when he was officially a seventh and eighth grader-- and later, when he was a high schooler, he was released part of the day to take college classes. A couple of generations ago, he probably would have been moved up more than one grade, and just have PE waived. But in Indiana, PE requirements are taken VERY seriously.

Anyway, I will be happy if I see younger posters responding more often to say yes, they skipped, than older posters do. I’d love to see a move toward double-promoting, and away from G&T programs.

But if anyone wasn’t double-promoted, but WAS sent to classes with older kids while officially remaining in one’s age-grade, I hope the poster will note that.

As far as I know, this wasn’t done at my schools. I never heard of anyone else skipping. Since I’m smack in the middle of the Baby Boom generation, there were a lot of kids in all my grades and if skipping happened at all, surely I’ve have encountered it at least once.

In fact, when I was about to enter senior year, I had enough credits to graduate, but I lacked the mandatory 12th grade English and Social Studies classes. I asked if I could just take them in summer school and graduate early - nope. So I don’t know if it was the district or the times or my specific school. But it was almost 50 years ago. I’m not bitter. Not in the least.

:stuck_out_tongue:

I didn’t, but I was already younger than the official age cutoff so it probably would have been a bad idea. I did slip forward half a year when we went to the UK (school year 6 months forward - it was that or go back) but when we went home again I just slipped back into my old grade.

I don’t know if the possibility of my going forward again on the return journey ever came up. I suspect my dad would have been agin it - he skipped at least one, possibly two grades and started University at age 16, and he wasn’t all that in favour of the experience socially.

Good for them! Our daughter was younger than her classmates and would have been behind everyone throughout school, especially since we already knew her learning style was to hold back and then learn everything at once. They had a pre-first program in our school and we lobbied hard to get her in it. The extra year allowed her to mature and she always got good grades. If she hadn’t had the program, she would have struggled throughout high school. (We actually planned to keep her out of kindergarten for a year, but she needed speech therapy and had to be enrolled to get it).

Two years later, they eliminated the program, which was terribly unfair to students who happened to be born after an arbitrary deadline.

Once I taught two brothers in the same class who were not twins . . . The younger brother had been skipped up. Both were very bright. The one that had skipped was a little better at math, the other a little better writer. Ultimately their SAT scores were almost identical and they both got into a top private university. Mom was kinda crazy and put a lot of pressure on her kids and took way, way too much pride in the fact that the one had skipped. I suspect she pushed really hard for it.

It was a bad call. The older one still felt humiliated by it, years later, and the younger one felt embarrassed. They were constantly directly compared. It was an awful decision, as far as I am concerned. Both boys would have been happy and done fine if she’d just left things. The intellectual difference between them was so minor.

No, but because I was in a magnet program I technically had enough credits to graduate after 10th grade. I stayed for 11th and 12th grade, but I had filled my schedule with completely bullshit classes that I didn’t really have to actually show up for, and I was almost never there.

In my secondary school (11-18) there was a girl who had been held back a year but not for the usual reasons. She had been in a serious car accident and missed nearly a whole year as a result. She had a September birthday and was thus nearly two years older than the youngest girls in our year.

I have to say it was fair compensation for everything she had been through recovering from the accident. She sailed through the academic work effortlessly. She was tall, good looking and seemed impossibly elegant and mature. Whilst kind and only a tad patronising to us she spent all her free time with her former classmates of the year above. I envied her :slight_smile:

I skipped Grade 1 because I could already read and I guess a lot of Grade 1 involves learning to read.

I answered “it never came up that I know of,” but it was more of “I briefly considered it but never really took it seriously.” I was recruited by St. John’s College in my sophomore year and apparently the deal was (IIRC), they’d be glad to have me then, 2 years shy of my diploma. I talked about it with some teachers and decided not to pursue it.

My sister, however, did complete her credits in summer school after 11th grade, and so skipped 12th grade.

This is what I experienced in 3rd grade. I and a few others were put in with 4th grade students (it was called a split-level class). We moved in November of that year so I don’t know what the outcome was supposed to be. I assume, like you, I would have skipped to the 5th grade the next year. My new school did not have that program.

In first grade (in NJ), a girl in my class got moved ahead, and since I “liked” her, I tried to memorize a book so that I could demonstrate that I should be moved ahead too. Luckily, the folks in charge saw through my ruse - a few years later I realized she was not really my type.

After moving to CA as a Dad, we encountered phenomenon where parents hold their kids from starting for a year, so they’ll be more physically advanced and can excel at sports, which seems completely nuts and meant that my son was competing against slightly older kids for glory in middle-school athletics.

I was skipped from nursery school to kindergarten in the middle of the year. Then, the next year, I wasn’t old enough to enter public school, so I went to kindergarten again. Then, the next year, the public school had changed their cut-off by a month, so I could have entered 1st grade, but the principal convinced my mom it was better to start in kindergarten, since most of the kids did that, and I was on the cusp anyway.

So I was both skipped and held back, and went to kindergarten 3 years in a row. I’m really good at cutting and pasting.

Both of my parents were teachers, so I had a leg up to begin with. My birthday is in October, but my mother pulled a couple of strings and got me into Kindergarten early. Even with that, in 1st grade, I went to 2nd grade math and reading; 3rd, went to 4th; 4th, went to 5th. All along, the principals kept trying to talk my mother into my skipping a grade. Well, 6th grade was in a building about 3 miles from the one where 5th grade was. It was shit-or-get-off-the-pot time, so my mother agreed I should go to 6th grade. That means that I was 12 when I started high school, and 16 when I graduated.

Unfortunately, I’ve known a couple of wrestlers that did that before high school. Talk about the wrong priorities. There are some cases I’ve known more recently, but it was for academic reasons - kids born in August that started kindergarten at age 6 instead of 5, making them the oldest in the class rather than the youngest. Yeah, they did great in K-2; after that, the age thing really didn’t matter, and by the time they hit 8th grade, were middle-of-the-pack.

When I figured out I could get out of high school in 3 years and go to college, I did.

I also didn’t vote, because I skipped Kindergarten, which is also inexplicably out of the scope of the thread title.

Technically, I attended three days of K (this was in the fall of 1982). On the third or fourth day, I was moved to 1st grade. The three days were just to make sure I was able to handle the rigors of a full day of school; it was known during placement that I already knew just about everything in the Kindergarten curriculum.

Another factor was that the 1st-grade class was smaller than the Kindergarten class, which meant I could get more personalized attention.

Later, in third grade I started going to the fourth grade for reading instruction. In sixth, a classmate and I had advanced reading work (seventh grade wasn’t available at our location).

I did participate in “gifted and talented” programming but I don’t remember much about it.

Starting in seventh grade, the top students in the class (myself included) were split off into eighth-grade math; in eighth grade, we went to the high school for math and science and were one year ahead throughout high school, allowing us to take college courses as seniors.

So I was one year ahead of my age cohort for most classes, but two years ahead for reading (in elementary school) and math and science (in junior high and high school).

It worked out okay. I had no problems transitioning to college, but socially I was behind in primary and secondary school. On the other hand, there’s no guarantee I would have thrived socially had I not been advanced; in fact, it’s possible I would have been just as bad off just due to my personality and the larger class size (and the level of the work).

Powers &8^]