The often-reported lament that one grade skip is not sufficient as children may tend to outpace the curriculum in subsequent grade levels gives rise to the proposal that students be flexibly cluster-grouped by readiness and ability in each subject, without regard to chronological age (or "grade level"), into courses of appropriate placement and pacing.
This.
See, this is the way my DH11's "homeschool school" operates. She's currently grade skipped around 2-3 years for academic classes and 1-2 years for elective type classes. But it's hard to judge as there aren't official grades or cohorts. In any case, the majority of her curriculum is middle school level, though by age she'd still be in 5th grade in the public school.
Socially, I believe this has worked out much better than a grade skip in the highly segregated public schools would have. Each class has a suggested age range and the majority of the participants cluster in this range (but that can be 4-6 years, so that's a broad cross-section of students). There are also outliers on both ends of the age spectrum. It's perfectly academically and socially acceptable to take the classes you are ready for or interested in, whether that means you're a 7-year-old in middle school biology or a 13 year old boy taking a fiber arts class with a bunch of 8-year-olds (both actual examples from the school).
The students seem to group themselves naturally into age appropriate clusters outside of class. So the teens hang mostly with other teens. My daughter's friends are between 10 and 13, which feel appropriate and in no way problematic for her in terms of maturity.
While my daughter's school has limitations due to the fact that it is technically homeschool, I believe a modified model could work for all public schools. Not that it will ever happen.
