Skipping a grade appears to be advised against these days, and we found it in practice quite difficult to do. But our son (S) did so, and I’m sharing the experience in case it helps anyone else. Technically, S finished two grades in one year (something I just learned is called telescoped curriculum, another form of acceleration) as opposed to skipping, and I’ll describe that in a bit. Two years later, it seems to have been the right choice. I’ll first share our experience, and then a bit of what I found in the literature about grade skipping.

Our experience in attempting to grade skip (and the telescoping we ended up doing)

When S was getting to school-enrollment age, I learned that California had shifted the birthday cutoff for school enrollment from December to September. Had S been born a year earlier, with his autumn birthday he would have enrolled in school two years earlier because he would have been on the other side of the previous cutoff. 

S wasn’t a particularly early reader and at first later enrollment at the local public school seemed to fit. After kindergarten, he was placed in the advanced reading level English (i.e. Language Arts), which kept him engaged. In contrast, math was the same for everyone. We asked S’s teacher on one occasion and the principal on another about providing more challenge. Both times S was given some additional math worksheets for a little while, but it petered out. The principal’s stance was that students who find math easy benefit from being in a class with those who do not. If there was some benefit, it was hard to tell. But when S joined the after school math olympiad club in third grade, he grew much more interested in math (as measured by how often things come up in conversation at dinner, etc. — a metric that seems to work pretty well for us :p).

Seeing the engagement potential for learning at a higher level, we applied, and S was accepted, to a private school for 4th grade. It had a second teacher for each math class that would provide tailored schoolwork. We agonized over whether to enroll there, but ultimately chose the convenience, cost, and social signaling of the walkable/bikeable neighborhood public school. We doubled down on making the public school work, and in 4th grade I became the coach for the math club.

In the spring of 4th grade, covid hit. S’ teacher was accommodating and allowed S to partly homeschool rather than Zoom for all his classes. S could do math at his own pace via Khan Academy, and sample other online courses, including programming. S so enjoyed independent learning that he expressed a preference for homeschooling for 5th grade vs. going “back” to school for zoom classes. I’ve written before about the good experience we had, but the relevant part here is that S greatly enjoyed choosing his courses and going at his own pace.

Although homeschooling was fun, I fretted that with the creative choice of courses he would have fallen behind the state standards and curriculum. After finishing elementary school (5th grade) with one year of homeschooling, S started 6th grade in-person at the local middle school. The school district has tracked math classes, gated on a test. Thanks to his Khan Academy self-study, S got into the highest track (6th grade: pre-algebra, 7th: algebra I, 8th: geometry). He actually qualified for the 7th grade of that track, but the school didn’t tell us, and he enrolled in the 6th grade math class.  

For the first trimester, S barely mentioned anything about school. We never saw him doing homework. Before we got the first report card, I was wondering if his grades would be poor. But that was not the case. When we asked how that was possible, he explained that he had so much down time in classes that he just did the homework in class (in addition to reading a lot of books). By the winter he was mentioning that the material in school was a repeat of things he had learned before. And some of his teachers were spending most of their time trying to control the class rather than teaching. We nodded sympathetically, but didn’t say much because we hoped he would get used to it or things would change for the better on their own.

When he/they did not, we considered a grade skip. He was just on the other side of the cutoff. If he skipped, he would be only a bit younger than the youngest in his grade, and there is a 12 month spread among the students anyway, an extra month or two would not be that noticeable. Thanks to California’s obsession with standardized testing, we knew he would test OK. Besides possibly alleviating some of the immediate boredom with school, skipping ahead meant that he would reach high school one year sooner. In high school he would be able to choose courses that would challenge him. This would also mean graduating from high school a year sooner. We already knew that he really enjoyed the specificity of college courses from his homeschooling stint. Or if he wanted to delay college, he could go travel around or do an internship for a year or whatever, and take advantage of the bonus time gained in the skip.

We also were afraid of the downsides: how would his friendships be affected? A mitigating factor was that some of his closest school friends from elementary school had already been attending different schools due to a redistricting and different middleschool catchments. The friendships had survived on afterschool and weekend socializing, something that was reinforced for all friends, in the same and different school, by the covid school closures. There was also the fear, and I feel it very much while writing this, that by making this request I’d somehow be singling out S as “better than.” Even when we chose public school vs. private, not wanting to appear as if we deserve better than what the public school has to offer was a factor. I wanted to believe and invest in public school education.

After checking that the school district bylaws allowed “acceleration,” we emailed a request to the principal. It took several weeks and emails to even get a reply. The reply did not acknowledge our specific request for S to skip a grade, but instead (eventually) initiated a more generic assessment in which S’ teachers were contacted. The teachers all enjoyed having S in their classes, but our request for criteria that would be used for a grade skip or even an acknowledgement of the actual request went unanswered. At one point, without consulting us first, the principal emailed all of S’ teachers, asking them to implement “enrichment.” Expecting a teacher, working alone, to adjust challenge for individual students in a 30-student class is just not feasible, and not a burden we wanted to impose. After all, there is a reason the private elementary school had a second in-class teacher to tailor math classes to students. Nothing changed in class, which was not unexpected. The grade skip, if implemented, would be no additional work for anyone.

It was several months before we were invited to a zoom call with the principal and some of S’ teachers, where we were told that grade skipping is just not something they recommend, giving generic excuses such as “Later he can take some community college courses in high school.” We repeatedly asked for and were never given a record of the decision and its justification in writing. 

It was nearing the end of the school year. By now S had gotten hopeful about skipping a grade, and the prospect of returning to school the next year was not as appealing. I had quit working, opening up the possibility of homeschooling again, but I feared we would end up at the same spot once he re-entered regular school — that only his exact age or an official transcript would be looked at, not his academic and emotional readiness. 

I started looking into online schools, and the first one I called was Laurel Springs School (LSS). They’ve been offering online-only education for decades and had an energetic sales team who convinced me that although they could not allow S to enroll in 8th grade directly after 6th, he could finish both 7th and 8th grade in one year. There is a minimum requirement of 5 months enrollment per grade by some kind of educational regulator, and LSS lets students work through material at their own pace. 5 + 5 = 10 months of school, still leaving 2 months for summer break, followed by enrollment in the public high school.

LSS tuition cost is a fraction of in-person private school. LSS also offers an “Academy” enrollment, but it requires a weekly workshop that precludes compressing the schedule as we wanted to attempt to do. So S enrolled in the regular LSS program, paying a bit extra to take highschool “Algebra I honors” for 7th grade and “Geometry honors” for 8th grade. He was also able to take Mandarin for the first time “in-school.”  The lessons are asynchronous, with the teachers offering regular office hours.

I wouldn’t recommend an online-only school such as LSS in a situation where the student is alone at home. That I think would be too lonely. But without work, I could be home, and it also allowed us to do some travel, which I describe in another post. S cruised through the material, and I was there as a sounding board for the occasional observations about something he had read. I could also hear his gripes about the format of learning materials (e.g. many multiple choice questions, etc.). I joined him for ping-pong and lunch breaks, and he typically finished schoolwork for the day before he would have been out of regular school. With the extra free time he took some additional coding courses online on his own initiative. 

The only stressful part was the multi-step course/semester completion process, which relied on the teachers checking certain boxes before the semester could then be tallied as complete, which required another checking of the box, which held up getting the next-semester’s assignments. In January there may have been an additional checking of the box for completing 7th grade which also took a couple of days. We were looking at next summer’s sleepaway camps and hoping S would finish before July, which he did, but it took a bit of frantic emailing at the conclusion of each semester to get all the boxes checked.

The following year S enrolled in the local public high school without a hitch. He lucked out with good courses/teachers, joined one of the many student clubs, and played on a JV sports team. Now in his sophomore year, he again chose classes he’s finding interesting, continued with the one club and joined another, does some coding in his free time, and gets together with friends. We wanted him to be able to proceed at an engaging pace, and that’s what the grade-skip accomplished. I’m happy to see him caring about learning and happy that the current level of his courses is rewarding him for doing so.

In the end, the skip shouldn’t have been such a near-impossible feat. I think it’s too bad that current practice all but forbids it, which is why I’m sharing our workaround (which I realize will not be feasible or attractive for most). Unfortunately, each family is sort of on their own in navigating acceleration, it is not something a bunch of families will get together to petition the school district about.

What I learned reading about school cutoff dates and grade skipping

I wondered whether being younger or older within a grade affected educational outcomes. Because different states within the US (and Mexico, etc.) shifted the cutoff date at different times, this provided natural experiments that were evaluated by several studies. Shifting cutoff dates earlier tends to raise scores in the early grades (after all, the difference between a 6 and 7 year old can be substantial). Though the score at a given age is consequently lower (so e.g. the 2nd graders have higher test scores, but the 7 year olds have lower ones, since many are still in 1st grade who would have been in 2nd grade previously). If what one cares about is ultimate academic achievement, delaying entry makes no difference in the US [1] . In contrast, in Chile [2] and in Israel [3], the score difference is present in higher grades. In Japan, there is a gain in test scores for both sexes and in wages for males[4], and in Brazil, older students applying to university had higher test scores [5]). In the US [6] and Austria[7] there is a ~1% wage difference in favor of starting later (though years in the workforce may be shortened due to a later start). A couple of the studies also mention spillover effects, where students whose enrollment is unaffected by the change in cutoff nevertheless test higher on average due to their classmates being older on average.

In contrast to the above (because if one thing is true of this research area, it is that studies have conflicting results), there is an amusing paper looking at younger vs. older students at an Italian university [8]. It is the younger students who actually test and perform better. Part of it seems to be that younger students have better cognitive abilities (I haven’t read up on this but this paper says that it tends to decline from age 20(?) on). So while in elementary school younger students lag their older peers, in college it is the older peers who lag the younger ones. If true, I wonder whether entry should be timed such that students take their most difficult junior and senior level courses when their brains are at their peak? I’ll mention in a bit a study of grade skipping that showed benefit in terms of scientific productivity. Could it be due to students being able to contribute scientifically with younger minds?

But in the university study, there was still unexplained variance in academic performance beyond cognitive ability. One hypothesis was that the younger students had to work harder early on in school and that this work ethic transferred to their university years. But what the authors ended up settling on was that the younger students had less of a social life (dating, partying, etc.), and that this benefitted their study habits. It also makes me wonder about the US study where older students did not achieve more academically, but did earn slightly higher wages. Could this be due to having higher social status in their cohort, which translates to social capital accumulation skills they can use in jobs etc.? 

Grudgingly I have to admit that the literature supports shifting the school cutoffs earlier, to increase average school entry age and benefit students a bit on average. Yet no study I’ve found explains (beyond gender) which students benefit most from the shift in cutoff dates (and if it harms any). Presumably it helps energetic students, since students who are young within their grade are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD [9]. This could also be related to boys benefitting more than girls from the grade shift, since they tend to mature later. Studies in Italy[10] and Chile[2] found that younger students are more likely to enroll in a vocational track vs. an academic one, which suggests that students who may not be obviously academically oriented might benefit more. On the other hand, the students who would have done just fine with the later cutoff (i.e. starting a year earlier), are now potentially under-challenged, and its unclear whether there is harm or even benefit in that.

One way to get at the cost of students being “under-leveled,” is by studying grade skippers. Grade-skipping studies have to deal with confounding factors due to self-selection. With best efforts to control for confounds [11], acceleration has been found to be positive for academic achievement (relative to academically comparable students who did not accelerate) and neutral to positive relative to comparable students in the class that was accelerated to. It reduced anxiety about school. Skippers do need time to rebuild their social network. Given that American elementary schools seem intent on disrupting kids’ social networks anyway by reshuffling classes each year, so friendships formed in the same classroom one year end up divided among different classrooms the next, maybe this is not a concern to administrators. But back to grade-skipping. In a longitudinal cohort study [12], skippers achieved academic and professional milestones in STEM earlier, and published and patented more by mid-career, than “matched” mathematically-inclined peers.

When small samples of students (and their parents) were asked whether they are happy about having done the grade skip, most of them said yes [13,14], for what that’s worth. The same interviews found that the students had adjusted well and “fit in.” In my generation, skipping a grade was a part of the toolkit educators could reach for. Several of the people I know socially and professionally of my age had skipped. I had skipped a grade while doing an exchange year in Germany. After placing me in 10th grade for a while, the teachers decided that the 11th would be a better fit (I had completed 9th grade in Stuyvesant, a magnet school in New York, which might have had a more advanced curriculum?). At the time it was suggested to me, I didn’t think much about the pros and cons, and went along. But by the end of 12th grade the following year back in the US, I was grateful that my teachers in Germany had initiated the skip. As a senior I felt quite ready to go on to college and the following year loved the freedom and challenge of Caltech. From the experiences of my friends and acquaintances who were skippers, a single grade skip was a welcome and good experience without regret. I’ve heard second hand of a child who was pushed by a parent to skip two grades, and the child eventually struggling. Skipping motivated by a parent’s drive makes no sense to me. What is it trying to achieve? What’s the rush? But if a student shows readiness and interest (and unhappiness and boredom in their current classes), then I think a skip is a reasonable thing to consider.

[1] Fletcher, J., & Kim, T. (2016). The effects of changes in kindergarten entry age policies on educational achievement. Economics of education review, 50, 45-62.

[2] McEwan, P. J., & Shapiro, J. S. (2008). The benefits of delayed primary school enrollment: Discontinuity estimates using exact birth datesJournal of human Resources43(1), 1-29.

[3] Attar, I., & Cohen-Zada, D. (2018). The effect of school entrance age on educational outcomes: Evidence using multiple cutoff dates and exact date of birthJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization153, 38-57.

[4] Kawaguchi, D. (2011). Actual age at school entry, educational outcomes, and earnings. Journal of the Japanese and International Economies25(2), 64-80.

[5] Matta, R., Ribas, R. P., Sampaio, B., & Sampaio, G. R. (2016). The effect of age at school entry on college admission and earnings: a regression-discontinuity approachIZA Journal of Labor Economics5, 1-25.

[6] Bedard, K., & Dhuey, E. (2012). School-entry policies and skill accumulation across directly and indirectly affected individualsJournal of Human Resources47(3), 643-683.

[7] Zweimüller, M. (2013). The effects of school entry laws on educational attainment and starting wages in an early tracking systemAnnals of Economics and Statistics, 141-169.

[8] Billari, F. C., & Pellizzari, M. (2008). The younger, the better? Relative age effects at university.

[9] Elder, T. E. (2010). The importance of relative standards in ADHD diagnoses: evidence based on exact birth dates. Journal of health economics, 29(5), 641-656.

[10] Ponzo, M., & Scoppa, V. (2014). The long-lasting effects of school entry age: Evidence from Italian studentsJournal of Policy Modeling36(3), 578-599.

[11] Miravete, S. (2023). Should talented students skip a grade? A literature review on grade skipping. European Journal of Psychology of Education38(2), 903-923.

[12] 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(1), 176.

[13] Gronostaj, A., Werner, E., Bochow, E., & Vock, M. (2016). How to learn things at school you don’t already know: Experiences of gifted grade-skippers in GermanyGifted Child Quarterly60(1), 31-46.

[14] Kleinbok, O., & Vidergor, H. (2009). Grade skipping: A retrospective case study on academic and social implications. Gifted and Talented International, 24(2), 21-38.

Grade skipping