I'm now prepared to follow up on my previous post, based on a conversation with DD8 this weekend. She's in the G/T program in her elementary school, which means a daily pull-out for math with one G/T teacher, another for language arts, and the rest of her day (less than half) spent unproductively at a grade-level homeroom, where she does science and social studies at what seems to her to be a glacial pace.
We were batting around the idea of creating our own school, when DD proposed that she'd prefer a model in which she'd have one gifted teacher each for math, language arts, social studies, and science. She'd go to each of those classes at the prescribed times, and never have to muck around with a homeroom that had nothing to offer her.
I told her she'd just described my experience in junior high, so consider hers a vote for middle school as early as possible. She's a fourth grader, and ready to start middle school now.
