Is anyone aware of schools�primary and secondary�that leave a bit of room in the curriculum to allow students to take supervised deep dives into topics? Because this takes time away from the rest of the curriculum, compensating acceleration may be required to some degree. The depth of interest exceeds the typical assigned project/paper and more closely resembles mentored exploration.

I'm familiar with parents supporting their children's out-of-school projects in areas of interest... not classrooms with time and support for such deep-dive projects.

Related post: A Project of One's Own

The only school-based programs I'm aware of are in specialized schools of various kinds, such as congregated GT schools and (in a slightly different, but still relevant, context) vocational and arts schools, which already have built-in immersive instructional time. Our vocational-technical school (which otherwise is not particularly out of the norm academically among its peer institutions) has had a few students whose deep dives in their voc area took them to the national level in in-field competitions. But in many voc programs, instruction turns out to be surprisingly routinely individualized and self-paced, with a fair amount of headroom for advanced learners.

Not the answer you're looking for I'm sure, but the ability to do in-depth exploration is a huge benefit of homeschooling.

^^What Kai said.

Montessori and several alternative middle and high schools also have a philosophy that supports individualized plans for learners and project based deep-dives.

But flexibility of the administrators is paramount, IMO, whatever option you choose. Even conventional high schools could work if your child has one or two areas of strength that require radically different work. It comes down to relationships and trust with the school leadership. If you can devise an independent study plan that meets or exceeds the curricular standards of your jurisdiction for those areas of strength, that might be feasible for the school. Practically, they could be delivered in a homeschool or independent study format, yet still grant the credential for the secondary credit without losing the school funding.

In my personal experience, classroom teachers can handle about a 20% change in content. Beyond this, you’re signing up to be either an instructional curator or de facto instructor, absent options for acceleration or enrolling in a specialized program. (I’m sure you can infer from the tone of my post that I’m a proponent of global skips and single subject acceleration.)

At primary age, it is best if natural curiosity leads to self exploration, to whatever depth the child’s interest takes him/her. I suspect that formal supervision by the teacher, however well meaning, could dampen enthusiasm and possibly stifle progress, particularly if the teacher doesn’t actually share an interest in the subject.

In primary, my son was often given time on the classroom computers to research topics of interest. His teacher provided bare but appropriate scaffolding by suggesting a format he could use to prepare presentations for the rest of the class. He only ended up presenting a couple of these presentations but he developed a good approach to research which has since served him well.

This is all much appreciated. Another thread, in which many of you posted, on free time has been helpful for thinking through time-focused limiting principles for the school-and-supplement approach.

A few programs in our area claim to have have experience in this type of compression/exploration: e.g. HCES, St. Ann's, Speyer, and Dalton, though we've yet to speak with families about how those succeed—including the point about not damping enthusiasm. Each approaches the issue differently. As a curricular hook to differentiation, an officer at Dalton explained that they build unscheduled "lab" time into the calendar with periodic check-ins. Speyer has two teachers in each classroom; perhaps they're suggesting that two gets them somewhat past the 20% rule of thumb? Others take a follow-the-child approach (with an arts focus for St. Ann's). Most don't appear at all affordable. This makes homeshooling a strong option, though we'd likely have to move to a lower-cost area to make it work.

There are many helpful resources, including:
- Gifted Homeschoolers Forum (GHF) https://ghflearners.org/
- A to Z Homeschooling https://a2zhomeschooling.com/special-needs/gifted-homeschool-resources/
- Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) https://hslda.org/
- and many, MANY more.