We were in a similar spot with my dd12 when she was 6. She, too, was one of the youngest in a 1st grade classroom at that point and we wound up taking her out to homeschool right around this point in the year. She didn't go back after spring break.

I truly don't feel that my dd was being manipulative; just that she was suffering so much that she didn't have a way to deal with it at age 6. She is intense and emotional but usually very reserved with expressing that around people she doesn't know closely. Thus, she's normally not one to show it at school. None the less, she was not only telling me that she wished she was dead, wished she had never been born, etc., I was also getting calls from other parents who were telling me that she was sitting at her desk in school crying and that the teacher was telling them to ignore her b/c she was a baby when they tried to comfort her. That was the straw for me that told me this situation wasn't fixable.

In hindsight, I left her in a rotten position much, much too long. We spent the whole year trying to work with the teacher on reducing repetition and change her approach with my dd, but what needed changing was more than she or the school was going to do at that point.

What I'd say is that taking him out, if you do choose that route, doesn't have to be a permanent solution. My dd is back in public school. It took a number of tries of different options ranging from changing schools twice, GT pull-outs, subject acceleration, and a grade skip to make it work reasonably well for her, but she is happy and doing well for the most part at this point.