CT is definitely NOT a gifted friendly state!!! We have no gifted legislation or funding at all. We just got very very lucky:-) His principal and our director of special education have been strong advocates. We are in a pretty low income/ low test score district, but the people have been wonderful and have done there best to make it work. If we were in a different town, or even a different elementary school in our town, things probably wouldn't have worked out this way, and we could never afford a private school.
Our 9 YO is 2E, and his psychological report said he needed "appropriate academic stimulation" in order to minimize symptoms of Asperger's and AD/HD (when they observed him in his 1st grade classroom for 2 hours, he spent 25-30 minutes doing mostly busy work and 1 1/2 hours sitting with nothing to do... definitely not a good setup for a kid with AD/HD, lol). So, they first skipped him as part of his 504 plan. Since then, they realized that it isn't such a big deal, and they are skipping my 5 YO (at least in reading and math) before we even have test scores in.
Anyway, as far as standardized tests: subject acceleration and one grade skip for my son didn't hurt his test scores at all, and that WAS a concern when he skipped 2nd grade - someone mentioned that he should take 2nd grade and skip 3rd instead because 2nd grade test scores "counted" and they wanted his scores (now all years count in CT, but before it was just 2nd, 4th, 6th etc..) Anyway, he still got an almost perfect score on the 3rd grade off-year test, so they stopped worrying about that:-) He gets free school lunch, and special ed for being 2E (two of our school's "failing" categories) and technically, he's listed as a full-time 4th grader taking 8th grade classes, so he took the 4th grade CMT's this year. Having a kid it two special needs categories, who reads way above grade level and does well in algebra, take their 4th grade test doesn't hurt them at all.
I'm sorry to hear your public schools were so inflexible! Unfortunately, it seems that's the rule rather than the exception. We realize how lucky we've been! When we had to move after I got pregnant with our twins (our family had SOOO outgrown our 2 bedroom apartment!!) we spent almost TWO YEARS waiting to find somewhere safe and affordable to live in our tiny district, because we were scared to leave!!! Anyway, no matter how gifted friendly a state is overall, my feeling is that it's the people, and *not* the state or the *rules* that make all the difference:-)
