Thanks for all the input. It looks like I should present the plan to the school board before we do anything.
I believe my child would do just as well socially one year up as she does now. She has as many older friends as age-level friends. Her BEST friends ages range from the same as hers to one-and-a-half years older, and she has close friendships with gifted, average, and remedial students. She relates well to them over common interests in art, gymnastics, dance, and music. We've always taught her that she's so much more as a person than just smart, and that while intelligence can lead to common interests, it has very little to do with a persons value as a friend. (Winnie the Pooh, Joey from the show "Friends",and CeCe from "Shake it Up" are all a little slow but make great friends.)
We are planning on putting her in the public school system. It has honors classes in English, Math, and Spanish, but they're not advanced enough. The Honors English class uses the same text as the regular class, but they read additional novels and have more writing assignments. The Math class gets you through Algebra 1 by the end of eighth.
The other kids who've left her private school transferred easily from the REGULAR slade classes into the public schools Honors classes with no problems and a decrease in the ammount of work. My kid is in the Advanced classes at the private school, and she could handle more challenging work. She has already been shown to have a knack for Algebra.
The plan would be for her to test into 7th grade Honors. I'd rather her be in 6th grade honors than 7th grade regular classes because the general attitude of students and teachers alike is so much more positive in Honors classes.
The public high school is a different story. It has enough AP classes to keep her busy as well as IB and STEM magnet programs. So I can't imagine the skipping issue would ever come up again if we bumped her up once now.
For those who asked about her testing:
She scores in the 97th to 99th percentile consistently in the various categories of academic abilities tests with a discrepency in Listening Skills. She scored in the 99th percentile when tested by an independent professional a couple of years ago, but only in the 46th percentile in that category on the school tests last year. I believe the discrepency was due to the ridiculously slow pace the teacher was going, repeating directions making sure everyone understood. Her mind kept wandering.
She has not had an official IQ test since her school didn't think much of them anyways, but I'm reasonably sure she's in the moderately gifted range (130-145). I'm comparing her to myself at her age - my IQ was tested at 135 - and she's smarter than I was, but not profoundly gifted.
