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.
