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This is awesome. Remember to use a counterclaim that directly relates to your thesis. For example, there are problems with the class: it does require time, effort, and commitment. It's challenging to maintain a healthy school/life balance at times.

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This is awesome. Remember to use a counterclaim that directly relates to your thesis. For example, there are problems with the class: it does require time, effort, and commitment. It's challenging to maintain a healthy school/life balance at times.

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~Gifted students are protected as kids with disabilities
~This class ISN'T too hard but it is a challenge for people who want to learn
~An environment of people who want to learn really helps the students
~everyone's students opinions of class

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not accelerated but AP

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Every May students nationwide take Advanced Placement exams in what is widely viewed as a big step toward enhancing their chances of being admitted to a top-ranked college.

But do AP courses - often considered the gold standard of secondary education - improve learning at high schools, and how do they influence students' college paths?

Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, examined those questions in a new research paper that reviews more than 20 studies on AP courses.

While the findings aren't black and white, they suggest that educators, parents and students should think carefully about such classes.

The new paper investigates whether these courses - by providing a standardized curriculum for all schools, rich and poor, urban and rural - serve to level the playing field. It also considers whether an emphasis on AP courses improves schools overall, and whether they give students an edge in being admitted to college.

The AP program began in 1955, and there are courses in more than two dozen subjects. The College Board, the group that brings students the SATs, administers the program.

Pope is co-founder of Challenge Success - a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Graduate School of Education - that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences.

Pope discussed her review of the research with the Stanford News Service.
What prompted you to look into the APs?
At Challenge Success, we work with many schools, public and private, helping them increase student engagement and learning. We've noticed some of the private schools dropping AP courses and even some public schools. They say they are a real cause of stress for the kids. And at some public schools, we were hearing that there was de facto tracking happening where advanced students were ending up on a track that put them mostly in AP classes and lower level students on a track of mostly remedial classes. There were two tracks and limited options for average students. So between those two concerns we said, "Gosh, we really need to look into the research on the AP and is it really all it's cracked up to be."
Is it all that it's cracked up to be?
That, of course, depends.

To the claim that they help students in college, it is true that students who take AP courses are more likely to succeed in college. But when you look deeper into the research, it's really hard to establish causation. It could just be that kids who take APs are kids who come from better high schools or high schools that better prepare them for college work, or they have better teachers or they're naturally more motivated. Very few studies use methods where they take these factors into account.
How do AP courses affect the quality of the school as a whole?
If you look at some programs, especially ones where AP students and non-AP students are in the same class but the AP students have extra coursework, the school can benefit. But if you look at others, where AP students are basically in a school within a school - all of the high achievers in one place - then you're not mixing it up with different kids. You're not allowing students to learn from everyone, you're isolating and giving, likely, better resources to a fewer number of students. AP classes will be smaller, for example, and they are often staffed by more experienced teachers. You could actually be creating more disparities in that kind of situation.
And what about students? Can taking AP coursework level the playing field for students of different social and economic backgrounds?
If you're in a rural school or a poor urban school, the argument is that at least having the common curriculum and rigor usually associated with an AP class helps to level the playing field.

There are some programs that are actually doing a really nice job using the APs as part of a comprehensive school improvement plan with more professional development for teachers and better services for students. But in many places, where they just plop in the AP program, it may not be helping at all. There's no indication that this is leveling the playing field in those communities.

The College Board approves the curriculum and there's the common test at the end, but everything else is optional. Teachers can go to the College Board's website and can sign up for professional development and learn ways to help underserved kids get better prepared. But there's nothing that mandates schools to do this. So if there aren't well-trained teachers and the students haven't been prepared well for the course, then kids won't really benefit from the program.
Are kids wasting their time with APs?
If you are truly interested in the subject, there's a good teacher and you're surrounded by other motivated students, then you're probably going to have a good experience from taking a more advanced class. But if you're pushed into it without good preparation and without a safety net in place at the school to help you if you get in over your head, then it may be more harmful than helpful.

Colleges don't always accept the courses for college credit, many students end up repeating the course in college anyway, and you can run the risk of memorizing material for a test versus delving into a subject and exploring it in an enriching way. Sometimes an honors course at a high school is actually a better option for rigorous and engaging learning.

Frankly, many high-achieving high school students are really stressed out. They have a lot to do between extracurricular activities and homework and also trying to get the sleep they need. They need to be prepared for what an AP course involves. The extra tests, extra homework, on top of an already demanding schedule, can be brutal. And a very low grade on your transcript from an AP course may hurt you more in the long run than not taking an AP in that subject at all.

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Are AP courses worth the effort? An interview with Stanford education expert Denise Pope

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Every May students nationwide take Advanced Placement exams in what is widely viewed as a big step toward enhancing their chances of being admitted to a top-ranked college. But do AP courses - often considered the gold standard of secondary education - improve learning at high schools, and how do they influence students' college paths?

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Association of American Colleges & Universities

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In every state legislature and every state department of education, and on many two- and four-year college campuses, you will hear conversations about accelerated learning for high school students. The particulars will vary from place to place and time to time and will take different forms, e.g., middle and early college, tech prep, dual enrollment, college access programs, Advanced Placement (AP), and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs. The mantra is to provide high school students with the opportunities to advance their education more rapidly by completing parts of a college-level curriculum while still in high school.

At a national level, student performance on a variety of tests indicates that students in the U.S. are falling behind students in other countries on performance measures of proficiency in math, science, geography, basic literacy, etc. At state and local levels, concerns arise around not only performance, but also budgets and economics. These primary rationales for the increased emphasis on accelerating student educational progress seem to fall into three broad categories: (1) students will be better prepared for college (i.e., students will be college-ready and thus require less remediation); (2) less time will have to be spent in college, thus reducing costs; and (3) students, and thus the region, state, and country, will be more competitive in a global economy and world. The article by Jennifer Brown Lerner and Betsy Brand catalogs these same factors and reports on the mixed findings of an examination of programs across the country (see p. 27).

What Does It Mean To Be College-Ready?

There is a lack of consensus on what "college-ready" means. Often the meaning relates to creating environments in which students do not have to take remedial courses when they arrive at college. But is avoidance of the need to take remedial courses the same as having the knowledge and skills that college faculty believe are necessary to be successful? Does readiness include the higher-order "habits of the mind" or simply refer to content knowledge? Given that the 4,200 postsecondary institutions in the U.S. have very different missions and broad variation in their purposes and students, "college-ready" takes on many meanings that complicate strategies for formulating policy on a national or even statewide basis. Indeed, Lerner and Brand found significant data limitations when seeking program evaluations of the impact of accelerated high school options. In addition, most measures of impact do not focus on the student learning necessary for college success beyond grades and content knowledge in specific areas.

The most prevalent approach to preparing students for college has focused on enhancing the curriculum. The claim is that by providing students with a rigorous and challenging curriculum, performance on tests will be enhanced and the competitiveness of the country will be strengthened. Hence, we have the American Diploma Project Network and the National Governors Association Honor States program, which seeks to "help more young people graduate from high school prepared for college and work success" (NGA 2005, 1).

Typically, states that have adopted either of these programs have acted to increase the number of hours in English, math, and science courses. Although there is an acknowledgment that all students need certain knowledge and skills, the emphasis tends to be on content coverage rather than higher-order abilities for liberal learning (e.g., critical thinking, collaborative learning, or analytic reasoning). Even a recent front-page Time magazine article, "How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century" (Wallace and Steptoe 2006), argued that twenty-first-century students need to be able to know more than one world, think outside the box, become smarter about new sources of information, and develop good "people skills"-in essence, they need a liberal education.

At the same time, schools are confronting the No Child Left Behind accountability requirements that all students achieve proficiency by 2014 in core subjects through work based on the standards from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But as Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder (2006, 1) observe, "no goal can be both challenging to and achievable by all students across the achievement distribution. Standards can either be minimal and present little challenge to typical students, or challenging and unattainable by below-average students. No standard can simultaneously do both." In addition, as David Koretz at Harvard points out, typical variation in performance between those with lower and higher achievement is not primarily racial or ethnic. Performance gaps in Japan and Korea, where students score well above U.S. students in math and science, exhibit the same range in scores (Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder 2006, 1).

Recognizing the limitations in making comparisons of performance on different exams, but also recognizing the gross similarities in knowledge and skills being asked, Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder (2006, 2) further draw attention to the need for clearly delineating what is meant by proficient and college-ready:

The highest-performing countries can't come close to meeting the No Child Left Behind Act's standard of proficiency for all. . . .

On a 1991 international math exam, Taiwan scored the highest. But if Taiwanese students had taken the NAEP math exam, 60 percent would have scored below proficient, and 22 percent below basic. On the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 25 percent of students in top-scoring Singapore were below NAEP proficiency in math, and 49 percent were below proficiency in science. On a 2001 international reading test, Sweden was tops, but two-thirds of Swedish students were not proficient in reading, as NAEP defines it.

The emphasis across the country currently is to enhance the curriculum and its rigor as the most direct, and perhaps simplest, way to begin to close the performance gap between U.S. students and students in other countries around the world. Most often this translates into requiring more credit hours or courses in specified subject areas with performance change to be judged by some type of external standardized test from state, national, or international agencies.

The Preferred Choices

In the United States, two programs in secondary school-Advanced Placement (AP) and the International Baccalaureate (IB)-have been used increasingly during the last ten years, becoming the most pervasive options for students in high school who wish to take college-level courses and have the chance to earn college credit. The courses have an off-the-shelf curriculum that forms the basis of tests taken upon completion of the courses, which are graded and awarded a score representing the level of student performance-both advertise that students are "college-ready" as a result of their AP/IB work. The common curriculum and externally validated assessment of student performance provide appealing arguments for the rigor and value of these programs.

Advanced Placement Program
According to the nonprofit College Board that administers the AP program, AP provides thirty-seven courses and exams across twenty-two subject areas. Each exam is graded on a scale of 1 to 5. The AP Web page lists a number of "reasons to sign up" for the AP program:

Gain the edge in college preparation

Get a head start on college-level work.

Improve your writing skills and sharpen your problem-solving techniques.

Develop the study habits necessary for tackling rigorous course work.

Stand out in the college admissions process

Demonstrate your maturity and readiness for college.

Show your willingness to push yourself to the limit.

Emphasize your commitment to academic excellence.

Broaden your intellectual horizons

Explore the world from a variety of perspectives, most importantly your own.

Study subjects in greater depth and detail.

Assume the responsibility of reasoning, analyzing, and understanding for yourself.

What college-bound student or family would not be motivated by all of these benefits?

Further, since individuals do not have to take courses in order to sit for the exams, students can repeat exams (although test dates are infrequent). And since the exams are multiple-choice, it is to students' advantage to guess if they can narrow their choices. Each test requires a fee. Both the national AP and many states offer fee reductions to students who can demonstrate need.

The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme
IB is more popular abroad than in the U.S. and is not nearly as pervasive as AP, but it is available in many American school districts. The diploma program curriculum requires students to complete six courses from six different subject areas, write an Extended Essay (EE) of up to four thousand words, take part in the Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class, and fulfill a requirement of fifty hours in each of the Creative, Active, and Service (CAS) pursuits. Grades are awarded from one to seven in each subject, and up to three "bonus" points may be awarded depending on the grade results of the EE and TOK. Thus, a total of forty-five points may be obtained by the candidate for the final diploma. In order to receive an IB diploma one must earn a minimum of twenty-four points. Since the curriculum is offered in countries around the world, U.S. students can be compared in an international context.

Pros and Cons of AP/IB

The arguments that underlie the popularity and appeal of AP/IB include the rigorous or challenging content and the external scoring of the tests based upon national (AP) and international (IB) standards, which allows for comparability regardless of where the test was administered. The tests also include some skill/ability demonstration beyond knowledge of a content area, e.g., analytic reasoning.

Critics of the IB examination point to the cost of the tests that, if not subsidized in some way, advantage those with higher incomes. Even though the IB has a standard curriculum worldwide, the actual courses available in specific schools can vary substantially. There has also been criticism related to the segregation that often occurs between IB and non-IB students within a school. Since actual responsibility for IB rests with the local schools, there can also be broad variation in implementation, especially in the number of hours associated with the CAS activities. In general, the complaint raised is about the extraordinary time commitment required for IB program participants.

Critics of the AP program, including many AP teachers, argue that content coverage trumps time spent on developing other valuable outcomes (e.g., improved writing skills). Or equally important, the types of supports that have been associated with academic success for first-generation and underrepresented students (e.g., learning strategies, tutoring) are not available for such students in AP courses. Rigor in the various AP programs varies.

Given the popularity of the two exams, there is surprisingly little data on the impact of either AP or IB on future learning and success. At a summit sponsored by the Lumina and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations in Atlanta in 2006, the report of the proceedings concluded that evidence of a positive impact from accelerated learning options is weak at best. Lerner and Brand (2006) of the American Youth Policy Forum underscored and illustrated this point, citing conclusions from a two-year research project that evaluated twenty-two postsecondary transition initiatives. "While the project was able to identify some signs of positive performance, it also concluded that the initiatives collected insufficient data for a thorough analysis of outcomes (due to lack of longitudinal data and an inability to disaggregate)" (Reindl 2006, 3).

ACT, Inc., producer of one of two major college-admissions tests, defines college readiness as having a 75 percent chance of earning a C or better, and a 50 percent chance of earning a B or better, in four common first-year courses. A 2004 study of the relationship between high school course taking, ACT scores, and students' college grades found that "only 13 percent of students who had competed high school math through algebra 2, and only 37 percent who had completed math through trigonometry, achieved the score that the ACT identified as ready for college-level work" (Olson 2006, 2). A study of Chicago public school students found that grades in core academic courses were more important predictors of college enrollment and graduation than scores on admissions exams. Trevor Packer, executive director of the College Board, has indicated that research suggests the AP label may be given to high school courses that do not actually use college-level curricula (Viadero 2006).

Klopfenstein and Thomas (2006) found no evidence that the average student derives a positive benefit from AP experience beyond that provided by a non-AP curriculum strong in math and science. Studies finding positive AP effects do so because they fail to control for the student's non-AP curriculum. . . . Using students who entered Texas public universities directly after graduating from high school in May 1999, we find that, for the average student, regardless of race or income, AP experience does not increase the likelihood of early college success beyond that predicted by the non-AP curriculum. . . . We demonstrate that studies which find positive effects of AP enrollment on college outcomes are unreliable when they fail to control for the body of the student's non-AP curricular experience.

Sadler and Tai found that while students who had taken AP courses in those subjects [physics, chemistry, and biology] in high school received better college science grades than peers who had not, the differences were minimal . . . the AP advantage shrank by half when controlled for differences among students in prior achievement, other high school coursework, and parents' income and educational levels. (Quoted in Viadero 2006, 1)

As these and other studies are finding, much of the AP effect disappears when other core courses are added. Rigorous curriculum becomes the key. However, most recently, and not yet released at this writing, two new studies reported in the Washington Post and Inside Higher Education that were commissioned by the College Board using data on Texas students find that AP courses and exams do have a positive impact on students on a variety of standard measures of college performance. The superintendent of the Redmond, Washington, schools argues that all courses should be AP courses, i.e., they should involve rigorous coursework in academic core areas that could allow for more curriculum-wide attention to liberal learning goals and to the pedagogical approaches that have been demonstrated to enhance student success for all students, including first-generation and underrepresented students-a point that Lerner and Brand also raise in their article. As the Atlanta summit participant practitioners pointed out, "acceleration is not just going faster but structuring the learning experience and teaching in a more effective way. Acceleration motivates students by challenging them rather than remediating them" (Reindl 2006, 2).

Conclusion

AP/IB are likely to continue as leading options for students to gain college credit while still in high school, as demanding courses that typically exceed standard high school courses, and as college admissions markers for many campuses that give AP/IB students a boost when considered for admissions. The evidence that AP/IB programs correlate with college success remains limited and conflicted, especially related to essential liberal learning outcomes. The evidence that AP/IB programs correlate with college success remains limited. Just as some colleges are eliminating SAT and ACT exams as part of admissions, a handful of high schools (typically very selective ones) have either never adopted AP/IB or have dropped them in favor of rigor in their standard curriculum (Hammond 2005).

However, few high schools are willing to incur the ire of parents and students who view AP/IB as essential for college entry and to ignore the fact that the programs can enhance learning, especially when the standard curriculum is not providing challenging learning experiences for all students. The real challenge is designing accountability and stimulating challenge for all with realistic goals that reflect human variation.

References

Hammond, B. G. 2005. On dropping AP courses. Education Week (January 19): 1-3.

Klopfenstein, K., and M. K. Thomas. 2006. The link between Advanced Placement experience and early college success. personal.tcu.edu/~kklopfenstein/

Lerner, J. B., and B. Brand. 2006. The college ladder: Linking secondary and postsecondary education for success for all students. Washington, DC: American Youth Policy Forum.

National Governors Association (NGA). 2005. Ten states named honor states, News release. July 14.

Olson, L. 2006. Views differ on defining college prep. Education Week (April 26):1-7.

Reindl, T. 2006. Postcards from the margin: A national dialog on accelerating learning. Boston: Jobs for the Future.

Rothstein, R., R. Jacobsen, and T. Wilder. 2006. "Proficiency for all" is an oxymoron. Education Week (November 29): 1-4.

Viadero, D. 2006. Scholars warn of overstating gains from AP classes alone. Education Week (February 15): 1-4.

Wallis, C., and S. Steptoe. 2006. How to bring our schools out of the 20th century. Time (December 18): 48-56.

Terrel Rhodes is the vice president for quality, curriculum, and assessment at the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

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In every state legislature and every state department of education, and on many two- and four-year college campuses, you will hear conversations about accelerated learning for high school students.

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This boy at the starting blocks is ready to race. He's really fast. He is, in fact, the fastest runner on the team. To make sure that no one's feelings get hurt and that he is able to fit in socially, his coach has him wait every 100 meters for everyone else to catch up, and then he's allowed to go another 100 meters. Everyone on the team finishes the race together with identical times. The team never wins any races, and no one knows how fast this kid can really go (because they don't let him run his fastest race), but everyone likes him at the team parties. And that's the important thing, right?

This scenario may sound ridiculous, but it is far less ridiculous than the entrenched practice of putting students in grade-level bands with no thought to any other criteria than chronological age. The only thing that approaches it in absolute stupidity is the refusal to acknowledge that there is a cheap, easy, and effective solution. Disclaimer: I accelerated all of my children with universally positive results, so I don't even pretend to be neutral about this.

Very few things in gifted education are a panacea. The closest we get is acceleration. At the same time, few things in gifted education are less well-understood than the idea that students should be allowed to progress at their own pace of learning, rather than by their birthdays.

Reading an post called Against Acceleration (which I hesitate to even link to, actually) has brought this to the surface for me, and I want to discuss the how's and why's of doing acceleration right (and why we should). So all of those opposed to acceleration: I'm calling you out.

First, we have to look back at why school is set up the way it is: it is designed to create good employees. To this end, students are compartmentalized by chronological age (down to the day, in most instances). Many schools' hackles get raised when the suggestion is made that the child may benefit from learning at a level above that of the other kids who were born during the same twelve-month band.

What is truly ridiculous is that the date of school admission varies from state to state, so that a four-year old in California with an October birthday can start Kindergarten, while a child in Texas born the same minute has to languish in preschool. Where is the reason in this?

Until the entire system is fixed, acceleration corrects this error. Your birthday shouldn't be a limitation. It's just a starting point.

Next, people who are opposed to acceleration nearly always point out the socialization aspects. They worry that somehow the accelerated child will commit some social faux pas at the third-grade equivalent of a cocktail party. This is the argument that makes the very least sense to me. While acceleration isn't necessarily going to fix students' social challenges, it doesn't make a child fit in any better if they are forced to remain in a classroom in which they are head and shoulders above their age-group peers cognitively. Newsflash: other kids notice. I know: I taught third grade.

If a child is struggling socially, address that. Don't punish a child academically because of social challenges. We would object strenuously if a teacher attempted to lower a child's grade because he or she didn't have friends in the class, yet forcing the child to stay in the "right" grade does just that. Kids can find age-group-peer friends outside of school as well, if that is a concern. Scouting, sports, arts, and other activities all ensure that kids can form friendships.

Oh, and have you ever noticed that almost everyone has social challenges of some kind in school? I enter into evidence: 7th grade. I rest my case. Those girls in the picture don't like her any better because she stayed in a grade that's too easy for her.

Keeping a child in an inappropriate academic placement will not necessarily result in friends. Do I really have to say that?

Another issue the keeps people from embracing acceleration is that they have the mistaken notion that it is nothing more than "skipping" a grade. There are multiple forms of acceleration, and they can be used in combination. AP classes are a form of acceleration, but everyone likes those. Why do they not have the same bias against them as other forms? Essentially, the student is "skipping" the high school version of the class and going straight to the college level.

Acceleration can mean going to a different grade for a single class. It can mean doing two years' worth of subject in a single year (Let a child move at his or her own pace? Blasphemy!). It can mean AP classes. It can mean moving ahead a grade.

One of my sons whole grade accelerated first grade (in full disclosure, he attended first grade for two painful weeks) and then single subject accelerated math and science. He graduated from high school at 17 with 74 hours of AP credit (and a prom date, for those who are worried about his social development). I asked him recently if he wishes he'd stayed at the "right" grade level, he said he couldn't imagine having to stay in school another minute more than he did. Another son single subject accelerated in math and took loads of AP courses. The other son ate a high school combo meal of AP and dual credit courses. All of this is acceleration.

The boys in this picture were accelerated and lived to tell the tale (and dance the Haka - blame their Aussie dad and too much watching of Aussie Rugby League).

I'm not saying that every child should accelerate. The Iowa Acceleration Scale can help schools and parents evaluate whether acceleration is right for the child.

It is not the duty of gifted children to make people comfortable. It is their job to learn. It is the adults' job to make sure that they have an appropriate education placement so that can occur. Acceleration can do that cheaply, easily, and with a minimum of stress on everyone when it is done appropriately. But you don't have to take my word for it.

The Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration invites students to share their own stories about acceleration, and you can read them here.

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The Advantages of Acceleration - Gifted Guru

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This boy at the starting blocks is ready to race. He's really fast. He is, in fact, the fastest runner on the team. To make sure that no one's feelings get hurt and that he is able to fit in socially, his coach has him wait every 100 meters for everyone else to catch up, ...

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Acceleration occurs when students move through traditional curriculum at rates faster than typical. Among the many forms of acceleration are grade-skipping, early entrance to kindergarten or college, dual-credit courses such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs and subject-based acceleration (e.g., when a fifth-grade student takes a middle school math course). Many researchers consider acceleration to be "appropriate educational planning. It means matching the level and complexity of the curriculum with the readiness and motivation of the student" (p. 66). [1]

In a study of high-ability children who had been accelerated, 71% reported satisfaction with their acceleration experience. Of the participants who reported they were unsatisfied, the majority indicated they would have preferred more acceleration. [2] In addition, in a series of interviews with students who were accelerated, an overwhelming majority of these students said that acceleration was an "excellent experience" for them. [3]

Some argue that acceleration can be harmful to students' self-concept, ability to fit in with older peers, or other social-emotional needs. However, research on acceleration has demonstrated multiple academic benefits to students and suggests that acceleration does not harm students. As the National Work Group on Acceleration determined, there is "no evidence that acceleration has a negative effect on a student's social-emotional development" (p. 4). [4]

In one study, students who were allowed early entrance to elementary school averaged 6 months ahead in achievement when compared to their age peers during the same year. Additionally, these students showed improvement in socialization and self-esteem compared to slight difficulties faced by advanced students who were not accelerated. [5]

In another study, researchers noted that a sample of students who had participated in whole-grade acceleration were not noticeably different in their perceived interpersonal competence (including interacting with others and their ability to form friendships) when compared to a heterogeneous group of students in the norming sample. In addition, the researchers found that the academically gifted students had higher academic self-concepts and more positive overall self-concepts than their peers in the comparison group. [6]

Accelerated students have also been shown to outperform nonaccelerated peers academically in the long term. A longitudinal study of students highly talented in mathematics showed that students who skipped a grade were more likely to obtain graduate degrees, publish work, and receive patents in the STEM areas [7], and another report noted that these students earned other advanced degrees at rates higher than their peers [8]. In addition, researchers have found that, overall, acceleration influences high-ability students' academic achievement in positive ways, and that these students outperform peers in other areas, including scores on standardized tests, grades in college, and the status of the universities they attend and their later career paths [9].

Acceleration is a cost-effective intervention. Grade-based forms cost little to implement, and yield societal benefits in that students complete schooling ahead of schedule and become productive adults earlier in their lives. Costs of subject-based forms may be slightly higher, but still less prohibitive than other forms of gifted programming. [10]

[1, 3, 9] Colangelo, N., Assouline, S., & Gross, M. U. M. (2004). A nation deceived: How schools hold back America's brightest students (Vol. 1). Iowa City: University of Iowa, Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development.
[2] Lubinski, D., Webb, R. M., Morelock, M. J., & Benbow. C. (2001). Top 1 in 10,000: A 10-Year follow-up of the profoundly gifted, Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4), 720.??
[4] Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration, National Association for Gifted Children, and Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted. (2009). Guidelines for developing an academic acceleration policy. Iowa City, IA: Authors.
[5] Rogers, K. B. (2002). Re-forming gifted education: How parents and teachers can match the program to the child. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potential Press.
[6] Lee, S. Y., Olszewski-Kubilius, P., & Thomson, D. T. (2012). Academically gifted students perceived interpersonal competence and peer relationships. Gifted Child Quarterly, 56, 90-104.
[7] Park, G., Lubinski, D., & Benbow, C. P. (2013). When less is more: Effects of grade skipping on adult STEM productivity among mathematically precocious adolescents. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105, 176-198.
[8] Steenbergen-Hu, S., & Moon, S. M. (2011). The effects of acceleration on high-ability learners: A meta-analysis. Gifted Child Quarterly, 55, 39-53.
[10] Assouline, S. G., Colangelo, N., & VanTassel-Baska, J. (2015). A nation empowered: Evidence trumps the excuses holding back America's brightest students (Vol. I).Iowa City: University of Iowa, Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development.

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Acceleration occurs when students move through traditional curriculum at rates faster than typical. Among the many forms of acceleration are grade-skipping, early entrance to kindergarten or college, dual-credit courses such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs and subject-based acceleration (e.g., when a fifth-grade student takes a middle school math course).

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The accelerated program is important for those in it and it is important that we keep it in our school

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1) What the accelerated program is
2) what people have against the program
3) counters to that and why the program is important
4)Our opinions and opinions of other students
5) our website + conclusion

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Main Ideas To Talk About In Presentation

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Main Ideas To Talk About In Presentation

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~our website
~why this class is important
~what people have against accel and counters to this
~our personal opinions and the opinions of classmates
~the positive affects of the Accelerated program

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~Very persuasive and serious
~basic and small amount of text
~5-10 minutes

# data[].attributes.headline
Reasons people want to get rid of the class

# data[].attributes.subject
Reasons people want to get rid of the class

# data[].attributes.body
~Too hard of a class?
~Should people be examples in other classes?
~shouldn't everyone be learning the same thing

# data[].attributes.body
~Personnel experiences with accel
~Studies about accelerated  students and how it affects people

# data[].attributes.body
Make sure they are honest about how they feel about the class and Mrs. EL can't see it