I said some of this in the other thread, but I'll post it here, too. If you find a non-academic half-day K program with an understanding teacher, it can be a very good year for an HG+ child. K was a good year for our DS6 because he had time to do his own stuff at home and he got to be social at school. The teacher's goal was to teach every child, no matter where they were academically. She was a pro at differentiation, and we loved her! Still do!
First grade--full-day highly academic--was abysmal. Just awful. So bad that we pulled him out of school. His 1st grade teacher didn't get him at all. She's a "get them all to read" specialist, and she didn't understand that he was bored silly with "a is for apple" all day, despite the fact that he had been IDd as GT in K, and his achievement test scores were DYS level almost across the board. I suspect several of the kids in the class were at least vanilla GT, because many of the kids we know who had never been discipline problems in K or preschool were acting out. She didn't see that this wasn't necessarily the kids' problem, but HERS!
I observed the class and was shocked by the way she taught. She told them the answers to the assignment literally 7 different ways, spending 15 minutes giving directions for a 3 minute assignment (!!!), and then she didn't understand why DS6 (and others) didn't bother to complete the assignment. Why should he? He already knew the answer! She had started bribing the kids to get them to cooperate (in addition to the taking away of recesses that she'd been doing all along) just before we pulled DS6 out of school. She had no control over that class.
I heard later that one other mom had at least threatened to pull her child out for homeschooling, and a third was advocating hard for her son (whom I know is at least MG) and feeling very disappointed and worried by the class. My own efforts at gentle advocacy were met with defensiveness and no changes. She wouldn't even put a harder book in DS6's backpack, a change that required literally nothing extra from her. With that refusal, I saw no point in trying further. If she wouldn't make that little change, she sure wasn't going to adapt the classroom work to meet his needs!
DS6 likes to play sports, so we weren't sold on a grade skip for him. A mid-year school change seemed risky, since we had done no research and had not budgeted for private school tuition even if we could find one that seemed right immediately. That left emergency homeschooling as our only solid option under the circumstances.
DH and I do thank this 1st grade teacher between ourselves, because I had never bothered to see DS6's test scores before. I was just happy he school had IDd him as GT without my having to advocate. I thought he was MG and that all was well. Then he hit 1st grade...and KA-BOOM! That awful experience is what got me over my GT denial (well, mostly...) and led us to see that DS6 wasn't "just" MG, but HG+, and a DYS candidate. It opened our eyes to what DS6 would have to go through in school--the boredom, the challenge to find true peers, the frustration, the underachievement, etc.--and there's a lot of value to that awareness.
Other than that fortunate awakening, our situation was perhaps the worst-case scenario, because we had the learn to read year with a teacher who was by all accounts defensive and threatened by GTness. A teacher open to GTness and willing to differentiate might have salvaged 1st grade. But it wouldn't have been as good a year as K. Even if we had skipped K and put him in 1st grade early, I think 1st grade would have been hard. Our better solution--though not as good as homeschooling has been for us--would have been to put him in K on time and then skip 1st grade. Second grade is supposed to be better in our area, less "get 'em all up to speed" and more open to differentiation, regardless of teacher.
Homeschooling has been nice because we can go deeper, not just faster. That works for us for now, and it allows us to put DS6 back into school in jr. high or high school at his age level if he wants to play sports. It seems to offer us the most flexibility to meet all of his needs, at least for now. Ask me again next year...
If you're considering grade-skipping, I think it pays to ask parents with kids older than yours about what happens in what year. Skipping the *right* grade(s) can really make a difference to finding a good fit, I think. Not all skips are created equal!
FWIW...
