| Purpose. The purpose of this study was to synthesize the research on the educational acceleration of gifted students. The synthesis covered 12 forms of acceleration: (1) Early Entrance to School (EE); (2) Grade Skipping (GS); (3) Nongraded Classrooms (NG); (4) Curriculum Compaction (CC); (5) Grade Telescoping (GT); (6) Concurrent Enrollment (CE); (7) Subject Acceleration (SA); (8) Advanced Placement (AP); (9) Mentorship (ME); (10) Credit by Examination (EX); (11) Early Admission to College (EA); and (12) Combined Accelerative Options (CB).;Method. A search of ERIC, ECER, Psychological Abstracts, and DAI databases, Education Index (1929-1965), manual searches of CIJE and RIE, and branching from study reference lists and reviews were used to collect extant research. Effect Sizes for Academic, Socialization, and Psychological outcomes were calculated for each study containing adequate data, then averaged across all studies pertaining to each accelerative option. Media Effect Size Estimates (Slavin, 1987) were calculated for studies with inadequate data for Effect Size calculations.;Results. Located were 314 studies covering the years from 1912-1988, 67 of which dealt with unproven gifted samples. Of the remainder, 166 were used to calculate Median Effect Size Estimates, and 81 provided enough data for calculating Effect Sizes.;Significant academic effects ($overline{rm ES}$ $>$.30) were found for all but three options (CE, AP, CB). Two significant socialization effect sizes were found (GS, ME) as were two significant psychological effect sizes (CE, ME). No studies were located for socialization outcomes of NG, CC, SA, and EX, or for the psychological effects of CC, GT, and EX.;Analysis by period of publication found a general decline in $overline{rm ES}$ for more recent studies (1966-1988). Analysis by general type of acceleration revealed a significant ($overline{rm ES}$ =.46) academic effect for Grade Acceleration, significant ($overline{rm ES}sb{lbrack {rm A}rbrack}$ =.49) academic and psychological effects ($overline{rm ES}sb{lbrack {rm P}rbrack}$ =.58) for Subject-Based Acceleration, and a significant ($overline{rm ES}$ =.38) academic effect for College Acceleration options. Analysis by grade level revealed significant academic effects for all forms of acceleration at each level ($overline{rm ES}sb{lbrack {rm PR}rbrack} $ =.64; $overline{rm ES}sb{lbrack {rm EL}rbrack}$ =.59; $overline{rm ES}sb{lbrack {rm JH}rbrack}$ =.34; $overline{rm ES}sb{lbrack {rm SH}rbrack}$ =.31).;Implications. A general pattern of positive academic effects was obtained for most accelerative options, but much about socialization and psychological effects remains unstudied. This study laid to rest misconceptions that: (1) acceleration is primarily grade skipping; and (2) acceleration produces negative social and emotional consequences for gifted learners. |
