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Parent urges Rapid City schools to fix inconsistency in acceleration policy percentiles
Summary
A parent and statistician told the Rapid City Area School District board that new acceleration procedures use a higher percentile cutoff than the district policy, creating unintended barriers for middle schoolers seeking to skip a grade.
Zara Maddox, a statistician, former teacher and parent, told the Rapid City Area School District board during public comment that newly adopted acceleration procedures contradict the district's acceleration policy and create barriers for students who could benefit from grade acceleration.
Maddox said the district policy (district code IGBB) uses the 90th percentile at a student's current grade as the eligibility cutoff, which would make roughly 620 of the district's about 12,400 students eligible to apply. She said sections 5 and 6 of the acceleration procedure (district code IGBBP), however, require a student to meet the 90th percentile of the grade they would enter after skipping a grade. That, she said, is approximately equivalent to the 99.6th percentile of the student's current grade and would reduce eligibility at a typical middle school of 500 students to about two students.
"Instead of guardrails, sections 5 and 6 are barriers for kids who might benefit from acceleration," Maddox told the board. She asked the board to update IGBBP so the test-score cutoffs align with IGBB and to change the test-score references to the current grade rather than the grade being entered.
Board members responded that they appreciated the research Maddox brought forward and said they would investigate the discrepancy. Board member Michael Birkland said he would "work for that" and called the proposed mismatch "a little much." Vice President Jamie Clapham said the comment offered an opportunity for leadership and review, and asked staff to dig into the concern.
District staff present during the discussion explained that the higher requirement in the procedure stemmed from a desire to assure preparedness when a student skipped an entire academic year. A staff member noted that some students who scored at high percentiles on content tests did not demonstrate all course skills on subsequent exams.
No formal action or policy change was taken at the meeting; board members directed staff to review the policy and procedures and report back.
The exchange took place during public comment and board response; it was not part of the consent agenda or a formal vote.
Looking ahead, the board said staff would revisit the wording in district code IGBBP to confirm intent and alignment with IGBB and report findings at a future meeting.
