It's hard to stop Math Acceleration once you start
Math Acceleration feeds upon itself
Our Kid wants to do more math.
We started Math Acceleration pretty early into our kids’s elementary school years.
We didn’t have grand goals like “Finish Calculus by grade X,” “get selected for the US’s International Mathematical Olympiad team,” or even “start taking Algebra 1 before high school.”
It was more innocent: " Our kid loves to do math, and she’s seen all the math they have to offer in her grade. Let’s see what else we can find that’ll be fun for her to do.”
The result of math acceleration.
Fast-forward a few years, and both of our kids are experiencing what is considered “Radical acceleration,” that is, schooling that is three or more years ahead of their same-age peers.
Depending on what US high school you are in and what classes the high school offers, our kids are now closer to 5 to 6 years accelerated.
Oops!
What can we say other than it was a slippery slope, and once we opened the gates to doing math at home above grade level, it was very easy to continue.
Someone somewhere can help us. Right? ………….……… Right?
Somewhere between being a year ahead and passing the “radically accelerated mark,” we started discussing what we were going to do with these kids.
We are not educators ourselves; we are just people who want to support our kids as best we can, so we contacted their teachers at school and other schools near our home.
Surely, in a subject as standardized as math, there must have been other adults before us who had kids who loved math and were given as much math as they could happily indulge in.
Surely, schools that have math competition clubs/teams must have some thoughts on how to deal with the situation we find ourselves in.
Surely, schools would have encountered situations where a kid loved a subject so much that they studied it outside of school on their own volition.
Sadly, we didn’t find help.
Almost every school we have talked to about helping our kids has been unsure of what to do.
They either don’t believe us, point to the rules and policies in the student handbook to say they can’t/won’t help us, or say it’ll get better next year or once they hit middle school (narrator: it doesn’t), or high school (we’re not there yet).
The worst we’ve encountered are people who aggressively demand to know why “we’re pushing our kids so hard and what we think we’re going to get out of it.” We have shed tears in some of these meetings out of frustration for not getting help and how we have been treated.
Acceleration is a positive feedback loop.
Once you accelerate, they are now ahead of the local school’s curriculum. So they will be more bored in math class, meaning they’ll be more excited to do math at home. This means that they’ll continue moving ahead and/or practice skills other students are mastering at a slower pace.
Then summertime hits, and perhaps you continue to give them math because they like it, which means you get to spend time together. At the end of the summer, the kid now has an extra three months of math work that most other students in their grade didn’t get—not because you were forcing the student to do it, but just because the student was interested and happy to continue doing what they liked.
If a US school year is 9 months and the summer vacation is 3 months, it means that every 3 years, a student who only does math in the summer will be accelerated by one year. This means that after 9 years of school with math in the summer, the kid (having done no extra work during the school year) will now be radically accelerated. Roughly, this means that in the US math system, they will be taking AP Calculus BC as a Sophomore or Freshman in high school. And this is only doing math in the summertime. Imagine what can happen if your kid does math year-round?!?!?!?!
Pushback: Is math acceleration equitable?
A common question we’ve seen online or when we talk with parents in our communities is whether it is equitable or helpful to help some kids excel academically while others are (so) far behind.
In other words, is math acceleration equitable? No. Not in the slightest.
Does math acceleration make our kids better than other kids? No, also not in the slightest. Our kids are just lucky that they like math and were born into a family that supports their love.
Consider what variables need to line up for a kid who loves math to be accelerated: A kid needs a family who can spot that the kid loves math. Then, the kid needs a family who thinks it’s doing academic work outside of school is okay. Then, the family has to invest in giving the kid more math. Then, the family has to continue doing so for many years. Then, the family has to be willing to continue to give them math in the (potential) opposition of the student’s teachers, school administrators, family friends, and society. Those are some pretty tall hurdles to overcome as a young kid. Not to mention poverty, neuro-divergence, behavioral issues (either the kid or family or school), etc.
While we help where/when/how we can, we can’t fix the world. But at least we can nudge it in ways we think are helpful to kids who love math.
The good news is that there are others out there.
We eventually found some pockets of families with kids who love math and have been radically accelerated. Thank goodness for the internet!
We found some people to talk to who have gone through what we’re going through or are currently facing the same issues.
There are actually other kids who love math and other families/parents/guardians/caretakers who give math to their kids after school.
The bad news is that there are no good answers
The three main ways people tackle it are:
Lean into math competitions (breath vs moving ahead)
Stop doing math
Keep on Keeping on
While they all said it worked for their families, they were quick to point out that they weren’t sure if it had been the right answer and that it would probably be very different for my kids.
Solution:
Lean into math competitions (breath vs moving ahead)
One family we spoke to decided to go all in with math competitions and found math competition papers from different countries worldwide. When their kid was in elementary school, they looked for elementary school math competition tests. They did the same thing when their kid was in middle school and high school. That way, their kid was always seeing math at “grade level” but not something they would ever see in school. This way, they could progress academically with their same-age peer group in math classes without sitting through math they had already seen before.
Solution:
Stop doing math
One family we spoke to decided that what they valued most about going to school was " Social-Emotional Learning (SEL),” and while their kid loved math, it would alienate them from their peers and teachers. So, they stopped doing any outside-of-school math for three years and focused on other activities. They figured that to help their kid become a well-rounded student, the kid should focus on their weaker areas like the arts, humanities, sciences, social sciences, and English. Their kid eventually came back to math in college as a math major.
Solution:
Keep on Keeping on
One family we spoke with has a kid (now homeschooled) who started innocently enough with a math tutor after school (before they moved to homeschooling). They initially got a math tutor because both parents are not “math people.” The tutor and student developed a great relationship and worked together for many years. Again, there was no grand plan other than “The kid loves math; let’s find someone with whom he can talk math.” The kid and tutor kept working together, slowly going through what they both found interesting. Several years later, the student (13 when we spoke with the family) has finished the equivalent of a US university’s undergraduate math program. Oops - it really is a slippery slope! The parents are now not only worried about what they would do for high school if the kid decides they want to go to high school, but they are now worried about what to do about college! Their solution was to keep on keeping on and find a math professor who was okay talking to their kid. The kid (a bit older now) is working with professional mathematicians even though they haven’t finished middle school yet. Obviously, this is ridiculously highly unusual, but knowing it can happen shows what’s possible.
Maybe we don’t need to know where we’re going.
Having considered this for many years, we’ve concluded that what works best for our family is to take one day at a time and check in daily to see whether the kids are still interested in doing math today. That’s all we can really focus on - today.
There are days when the kids say they don’t want to do math. And they don’t.
There are weeks when the kids say they don’t want to do math. And they don’t.
Who can blame them? Sometimes, eating ice cream and watching a TV show is more fun than doing math.
We are where we are, and while we can’t predict the future, based on their behavior over several years, we know that our kids love math, so we make sure to ask them every day, “Do you want to do math today?”
That’s all for today :) For more Kids Who Love Math treats, check out our archives.
Stay Mathy!
All the best,
Sebastian Gutierrez
Thank you for this, I just subscribed today. I have experienced most of this with our child and their schools. Really glad you're here and looking forward to more.