Early Entrance, Kindergarten

Early Entrance Strategy as Part of Acceleration

Early entrance to kindergarten is part of a larger category of accommodations known as acceleration. Though early entrance to kindergarten is a small portion of the spectrum of acceleration strategies, it is often the beginning of them. Students who begin kindergarten early are given the opportunity to move more quickly through school and graduate at a younger age than their peers. Research studies as early as the 1930s and 1940s showed the positive effects of acceleration. In the 1990s, the research team of James Kulik and Chen-Lin Kulik conducted a meta-analysis of acceleration studies that found acceleration to contribute in a positive way to academic achievement. The key factor was believed to be the degree to which the content was adjusted to the ability of the group. More recently, the John Templeton Foundation sponsored a major project analyzing the effects of acceleration on gifted students. The culmination of this research is in a two-volume report, A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students. This report highlights various benefits of acceleration as a strategy to meet the needs of gifted students. For more than half a century, research has shown that acceleration is a highly useful strategy for meeting the needs of gifted students.

Intellectual Needs of Gifted Students

For some children, early entrance to kindergarten is a good choice, but for others, it is not. Intellectual, social, and emotional maturity are critical factors to be considered when making the early entrance decision. With that said, some students experience [Page 271]enhanced social and emotional progress when their academic needs are being acknowledged and appreciated. Even very young gifted children sometimes have difficulty finding friends with similar intellectual interests. For example, it may be confusing when a gifted 3-year-old asks a young neighborhood child to play archeology. When the playmate is unable to respond positively and enthusiastically, the gifted child may not understand the seemingly unenthusiastic response, and both children may wind up perplexed. Continued experiences such as this contribute to feelings of frustration and alienation for gifted children. These same gifted students sometimes describe themselves as having been dropped on Earth from some other planet because their interests and ideas are so different from their same-age peers.

For many gifted children, the intellectual interest is so strong that it is a large part of how they view themselves. Placing a ceiling on their academic pursuits is disheartening, and when such constraints are placed on them, gifted students may feel as if they are being denied. Educational systems in the United States try to provide appropriate educational opportunities for students with special needs. Often when one speaks of special needs students, the term refers to some sort of limitation of abilities; however, some school systems are beginning to see the importance of meeting the special needs of students with advanced intellectual abilities.

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