I don't want to sound like I'm defending the school, but it is hard for them when a child can easily go so far ahead. Would they let him work solo on something like Khan? I would think that might be your only option.
He's not going ahead of where he should be, he's just going where he goes. It's obviously going to be harder for them to accommodate someone with special needs, but they could be doing much more-- it's not
that hard.
For instance, they could have looked at aggressive subject pullouts long ago, or another grade skip; there's been resistance not because those things would be tough, but because they are simply resistant to acceleration and have a weird no-double-acceleration policy. After a huge amount of pressure from us the principal finally admitted at the end of last year that DS obviously wasn't being served well and that an extra pullout was warranted at least for math, and that if one grade wasn't enough this year that they'd find the best grade level fit for him.
Honestly, except for transportation across school boundaries, I don't think it costs much at all for a school to find an appropriate grade level for a student. The pace remains a problem, but it's far better than sitting in a class that's below the student's level, and resets can happen periodically to somewhat accommodate for the pace.
Another option: the school could have given him enrichment, but not taken a half-assed approach. What happened at the start of last year was that the school delegated to the teacher, who didn't want to deal with the problem and shoved DS in a corner with some worksheets (fourth grade, too low for him), without any lessons or other input, and with erroneous grading of the worksheets to boot. Proper enrichment isn't that expensive, especially with parents volunteering to offload some of the work as we did. All the teacher would have had to do is approve the materials, and could have taken as active a role in selection and grading as she wished, or not.
We even suggested to the school that I afterschool him on math, but that he be allowed to work on material sent from home during math class. Again, the teacher could have vetoed or graded any or none of the material as she wished. This was attractive because it would have meant his time during class wasn't wasted, he would have needed minimal instructional time outside the school day, and he could study with the other students during the day, sitting in his regular classroom. They simply ignored these suggestions by suggesting alternatives, I think because they didn't want to admit at the time he wasn't being well served or that they found it hard to accommodate him.
So Khan Academy really isn't the only option, and I don't like the idea of my son getting all of his math learning from a computer anyway. I feel like a student has a right to a teacher, at least at this age. This implies to me some teaching either in class or at home which might be supplemented by a computer. Again, they've nixed the idea of us teaching him at home, but they've also not provided one single day of teaching at his appropriate level. My wish is simply that he learns at school and can actually be productive during the day.
