Thank you for your response, HowlerKarma. This makes a lot of sense. Just to clarify he is classified as a 7th grader for the online school work he does, which is for the purpose of transcripts, but chronologically a 4th grader.
I am interested in the full time college enrollment as a first choice and dual enrollment as second.
Ahhhh. Well, in that case, I
suspect that a college admissions officer's answer is going to be "you've tried middle school work-- maybe you need to accelerate further into demanding secondary courses at a higher level." Because you're going to (probably) need external validation for the fact that your child already has MASTERY of the entire high school curriculum.
Four years of English literature and composition, four years of math (through calculus, probably), four years of science (including biology and physical science with labs), four years of social studies (including civics/government, history etc), and at least two years of foreign language.
The problem with even very high SAT/ACT scores is that they don't really monitor about half of that.
You could try some SAT subject tests, I suppose.
But you say that he's taken AP coursework? What were his AP exam scores like? Or did you mean
would that be sufficient?
Here's the thing. At your position, we were very much in the same boat. My DD was pretty much melting down over the fact that schoolwork was stultifying/mind-numbing.
But high school
has been different. It's the greater pressure for extracurriculars (which she has developed a real passion for) and also the greater VOLUME in terms of expectations.
We filled with community ed classes in areas of interest while she was your son's age-- taken side-by-side with a parent, just because it was easier that way. For those, which were ungraded, she just needed individual instructor approval, which was always forthcoming once they'd met her and us.
The other thing I want to be sure to add is that you are very very right to not just make him "tough it out" for years and years with material that is so inappropriate.
Are you using a virtual school or are you homeschooling? If it's the former, do you mind noting if you're with one of the big nationals like K12 or Connections? We've been with the latter-- and honestly, I'm glad that we didn't bail and send DD to college when she was in middle school (chronologically 5th grade) when we strongly considered it.
Honors and AP coursework has been able to-- with extracurriculars-- somehow be "appropriate" for her. No, the work itself isn't all that challenging... but it also doesn't take her
eight hours a day, which I think is too much for a 10-13yo. Given the greater volume of written work as you go up in level (we've seen this even with AP), that is a serious concern for PG kids.
So. She's not with true peers-- but then again, sending her to college won't put her with very many of them either. She's with the top 1% of her graduating class, and they are 3-4 years older than she is. Most of them need 8-9 hr to manage her courseload, but she does not. It frees her up to do other things. If she were taking four or five college classes, that workload would be higher, and would cut into her free time. A lot. I want her to have time to just be a young teenager.
The other advantage to running through high school graduation requirements (which you can probably do in 3y if the school is willing to work with you) is that yes, it gives you (parents) a little more breathing room, but it also makes college admissions
easy. Well, not "easy" with a kid well under 16, but you know. Once they have a diploma
and the test scores, there's pretty much no way for them to say no.
