I'm curious for those unhappy with the public schools, whether your school districts have a high or low percent of gifted kids. All 3 of my kids are in the gifted program (hard cutoff of 130 WISC scores, although I'm sure some parents of kids in the 128-130 range have successfully lobbied for entrance), but only one would meet DYS. Our school district has an usually large gifted population (at least 10% of the kids in each of their 3 grades are in the gifted program, with closer to 15% for my youngest).

I don't feel our school district is perfect, but we've been generally happy and they have been open to our requests. The vast majority of teachers we've had are good with differentiated instruction and have worked with our kids to address their strengths/weaknesses. Sure, there's lots of bureaucracy, but at all levels -- from teacher to principal to district-wide curriculum heads -- they clearly care about the kids and want to make things work.

But again, we're pretty much a MG family and my DYS-level kid is a pleaser and happy-go-lucky.