Accelerated Learning Improves Student Achievement

For the 2009-2010 school year, the School District of Philadelphia will receive a $3.8 million grant for the GEAR UP Partnership, which will conduct intensive academic acceleration efforts aimed at 4,678 students in 6th and 7th grades in 28 low-income schools.

Academic acceleration, advancing students in subjects at a rate that places them ahead of where they would be in normal school curriculum, can include a student skipping one or more grades in generalized or specific curriculum. So a student could be eight years old and in fourth grade, but doing math curriculum for sixth grade, for example.

And in Ohio, the Springboro Community City School District is improving academic achievement by implementing academic acceleration, and is spending next to nothing to do it.

Though Ohio law requires that every district have and implement a policy on academic acceleration, most districts pay no mind to it.
Ohio law requires that every district have and implement an academic acceleration policy, although most districts do little more than pay lip service to the concept.

Students who opt in to academic acceleration, however, are quite successful, as shown by a case study posted on the Ohio Department of Education’s Web site in which a quiet, kind and sensitive 5th grader shared her experience in the program two years after going through it.

“I really liked being accelerated!” she said, noting that the hardest thing was leaving her best friend behind. “Also, starting in a new classroom with kids I didn’t know as well was a little intimidating. It was a relief to leave my fifth grade class, though. I had more friends in the sixth grade – friends were ‘long-term’ and didn’t change every week or so, like they did in my fifth grade class. I also liked the more challenging work. It felt good to learn harder things. I liked the way things were set up at the high school better, such as class scheduling and library resources. Everything felt … right.”

At a school board meeting, Sandra Warner, executive director of curriculum and instruction, discussed how important it is for students to be in an environment where they can excel in math, and eventually move into STEM-oriented careers.

"Our students are getting an excellent math education, and to be very honest with you, we think some of it has to do with our every day math series," she said at the board meeting. "But we also believe that we had these students in the past we just never identified them. So we're doing a better job at identify studying and their instructional needs."