1. Read about whether your acceleration is right for your student here.  NOTE: ACCELERATION forms may also be required for students who have completed a certain class at home or somewhere other than AHS but wish to "test out" of a class at AHS so that they can be placed appropriately. IN OTHER WORDS, completing an acceleration form is not limited to advancing beyond the regular scope and sequence of a course plan. 

2. NOTE: Is your student taking courses through an accredited school/academy? Check here to see if the school/academy is on the accepted list to transfer credit at ACSD. If so, acceleration is not required. 

3. Here is the acceleration application. You may submit your form to Student Services at AHS or email it to Paul Numedahl .

4. NOTE: When registering for classes on Infinite Campus, your student's counselor will need to manually input the course for which your student is bypassing upon completion of the acceleration exam, usually given in August for the following school year. 

5. If a student wants to take a math course that is at a more accelerated pace than Algebra 1 in 9th grade, the student is required to complete the request for acceleration form that should be available on the district website. The student would need to take a first and second-semester exam for each course that is a prerequisite and earn a score of at least 80% for each of the semesters (not the average of the two semesters). For example, if the student wished to enter Advanced Algebra 2 as a freshman, the student would need to score at least 80% on both of the semester exams for Algebra 1 and both semester exams for Geometry, in other words, 4 exams in all.

6. CONCURRENT ACCELERATION: It is possible to enroll concurrently in both Geometry and Advanced Algebra 2 as a freshman, so in that case, only the two semester exams for Algebra 1 would be needed.  Both Geometry & Advanced Algebra 2 would then be on the student's schedule for that school year.  

7. For the student desiring to take Precalculus during the 10th-grade year, it is the opinion of AHS's Mathematics Department that concurrent enrollment in these two courses is preferred to trying to earn credit by exam for Geometry to accelerate to Advanced Algebra 2, as students miss too much by not having the classroom experience. To be clear, concurrent enrollment in the core courses is possible only with Geometry & Advanced Algebra 2, as other cases need a prerequisite course that could not be taken concurrently.

8. The timeline for course registration and acceleration for the upcoming school year is generally determined by February 28. Once families submit their acceleration request please note they will not hear from the ELP department until they have processed the forms. You may submit your form to Student Services at AHS or email it to Paul Numedahl .

FOREIGN LANGUAGE ACCELERATION

9. The foreign language department handles this in a bit less structured way than, let's say, the math dept. at AHS

- An acceleration form does still need to be completed. However, more importantly, an email to Julie Dunkin at julie.dunkin@ames.k12.ia.us, the world language dept chair, needs to be sent and she will coordinate a time for either herself or someone else in the department to visit with the student to ascertain what level a student should be assigned to. During that meeting, a student should be expected to be able to read or may be given some written test. There isn't a formal acceleration exam as there is in math and a student does not have to wait until August to determine "passing the exam" as is the case for math. The meeting can be arranged at any time after emailing Julie. It's not a very formal process. And if a student is placed in Spanish 2 and if during the first two weeks or so it's determined that's too easy, there is not a problem for a student to be moved to Spanish 3 at that time, for example.

-If a student is placed in a class they tested out of, it's not awarded credit on the AHS transcript. I can't remember this part entirely, but I believe it's listed on the transcript with ( ) but no credit but don't quote me on that. I do know that no credit is awarded though. This isn't usually an issue for dual enrolled students, but it's worth mentioning.

-Scope and Sequence: ​I don't know about French and German but here's what Julie Dunkin has shared with me​ about Spanish

Here's the scope/sequence for the Spanish Department:

-Spanish I - present tense with a little preterite tense

-Spanish II -  reflexives, more present tense, preterite tense with some imperfect

-Spanish III - preterite v. imperfect, irregular preterite and verbs that change meanings, intro. to the subjunctive

-Spanish IV - commands, subjunctive, future, and conditional

-In all four levels, students read at least two novels a year. We assess all four modalities: reading, writing, listening, and speaking

-On a related note, I recently learned that ISU does not care if the foreign language a student takes to apply to Engineering or LAS is accredited. And no foreign language is required for admission to ISU. 

MATH ACCELERATION AT AHS IS A DIFFERENT PROCESS THAN AT AHS. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ACCELERATION AT AMS, FIND THE DETAILS IN THE AMS MATH ACCELERATION HANDBOOK. NO PLACEMENT EXAM IS REQUIRED FOR MATH ACCELERATION AT AMS.

NOTE: Is your student taking courses through an accredited school/academy? Check here to see if the school/academy is on the accepted list to transfer credit at ACSD. If so, acceleration is not required.