DD skipped from the middle of K to the middle of 1st. The reason why is because very little differentiation was happening in K and she just didn't seem to be learning much. She wasn't complaining because she probably didn't realize how boring it was or how things could be different. Since she was close to the age cut-off to be in the next higher grade anyway, we did it. I don't know that I'd do it with a child in a higher grade, where there might be more academic gaps. If a parent has been working a lot with a child at home, that would minimize some of those gaps. After the skip, she didn't have any problems at all, except that she was a bit behind in writing. They had hardly done anything in the first part of K in terms of writing, and I hadn't been working on it with her at home. And she was diagnosed with ADHD that year but she would have problems focusing no matter what grade she is in. If she was in second grade this year instead of third, she would have the same focus issues, except maybe they would be worse if the material was too boring. In the next grade up, there were some very advanced kids (lots of first graders reading chapter books), and DD was "high average" for the rest of that year, but the next year she began to move up and now she is one of the top achievers in her grade (in terms of test scores). Now we have the problem where the work is too easy again, and the teacher does almost nothing to differentiate.
