What does it mean that it is a "GATE/high achieving magnet school," practically speaking?
It is a magnet school housed in a regular K-5th school. They are housing it there due to low local enrollment; area is full of "good performing" schools, but this is one is the outliner in the district. The program is very popular since it started 3 years ago and it is difficult to get in in the upper grades.
Practically speaking though, it is not an gifted only classroom. The criteria to get in are teacher recs, test scores or reading/writing skills for kinders, and results from the nonverbal abilites test. I'm not sure how many true peers she will have here. Judging from my experience with volunteering in DS classrooms, it is full of bright kids. I can't tell who are bright versus gifted since I don't really work with kids very much and I am mostly out of the classroom copying and grading.
They start in 1st grade. My DS moved from our local school to this school for 3rd grade. For him, it's been a great match. They move through the curriculum faster and go deeper into subjects, using m3 math and great books as extra curriculum. It is not however, an accelerated program, which is why we met with the principal to discuss whether this school would be a good fit for my DD. He told us that generally it isn't accelerated and they are going to work with DD to do pull outs for her.
Problem is she whilst she likes the pull outs, she hates missing out on stuff in her regular classroom.
