Trinity,
I read the book review from the link you provided and also the review for the book on Amazon.com. It looks like another "must" read to me!
It is possible for my daughter to be single subject accelerated. The school has allowed this for other students. The real issue is this - if a child is in third grade but really needs fifth grade coursework in a particular subject, then the third and fifth grade teachers must teach that subject at the same time of day to accomodate the child leaving their regular classroom to attend the class at the higher grade level. If the teachers can't or won't synchronize their daily schedule, the child is out of luck for subject acceleration.
I tried to get my son in a higher math class this year. The two teachers couldn't work out a schedule to accomodate. Rather, my son meets with the special education teacher for math. The arrangement works out o.k. He gets some one-on-one tutoring. The only draw back is that the teacher has a LD student in the same time slot as my son. She is expected to teach a GT student and a LD student at the same time. The teacher instructs pre-algebra to my son and then immediately switches gears to teach one digit addition to the other student. My son would get frustrated listening to the other student struggle to answer "What is 5 plus 2?" Now he uses his time to work on his studies to assist the LD student. I can't fault the teacher for this arrangement because I believe she is doing the best she can under the constraints she's given from the school administrator. Her main objective is to work with the LD students and she has no previous experience working with GT students. Ours is the first and she only agreed to help my son because he basically didn't have any where else to go to learn math.
Advocating for gifted students can feel like a battleground somedays, but I'm absolutely convinced it's worth it. (I'm sure I annoy the teachers somewhat though.)
J.
