Academic Acceleration 1

Abstract

Academic acceleration comprises a range of challenging and advanced educational interventions designed to match the academic and social-emotional needs of high-ability students. Advanced students might move up an entire grade (whole-grade acceleration) or move ahead of their age-mates in one or more subjects (content acceleration). Conceptually simplistic, implementation of certain types of acceleration, such as whole-grade acceleration, remains relatively infrequent (Wells et al., 2009). Not providing appropriate challenges for highly able students (Peters et al., 2017) is especially concerning because lack of intervention defies the robust research supporting acceleration (Assouline et al., 2015; Steenbergen-Hu et al., 2016; Steenbergen-Hu &Moon, 2011), thereby ignoring best practice.