it bothers me that if I gave him the choice to homeschool he would choose that in a second.
Yes.
Here a lot of the teachers seem to spend 2 months testing the kids (or getting around to testing them), so there is no differentiation in the classroom. Then, they get in maybe 1 month of instruction, and if the child is lucky, the teacher is attempting to do some sort of differentiation based on the tests that took 2 months to administer. Then it's the holidays and no one is thinking about school.
And, ^^^ this. Exactly. When I hear what they are doing, I can understand why DS is bored. (And I remember being frustrated with all the time spent of review when I was a kid.) Since there are no gifted programs in our area, it seems as if each fall DS will need to prove his need for differentiation over a period of months. Until that changes, I can understand his reluctance. I'm hopeful about our new setting, but I know he is wary since last year was still "boring" despite all the assessments the prior spring. It can't be another year of him asking, "Why don't I ever get to learn anything in school like the other kids?"
