Wanted to thank everyone for the helpful comments. I would add that meeting state standards is something many gifted kids can do for breakfast. Partly that the standards are not all that high, at least in CA, and partly that the kid is gifted. So I am not fussed about nor would emphasize for the teacher or the home school curriculum. Curriculum could be devised working with the teacher, drawing from existing ones popular in home school, like royal fireworks press in the humanities, and art of problem solving in math. I mostly see this going through 8th grade. Gifted kids seem to have more options once they make it to high school. Of course at high school level, specialized teachers, with higher salaries, become part of the mix. Don't people generally start mainstreaming their home schooled kids by grade 9? It would sure tax my memory or skills in calculus or chemistry. The goal really would be to assume (or pre-test) that the child would get a good ISEE or SSAT score, but the focus could really be on social and emotional needs, following their interest, and just giving them as much customized learning and attention as possible. I suppose I'm assuming that a college educated educator could handle most things a gifted kid up through 8th (6th?) grade would throw at them. Then again though, gifted kids could probably get up through high school by then, so maybe separate specialist teachers become needed. Another angle could simply be that it doesn't have to be a model where the teacher is omniscient and dispenses knowledge down to the student, but instead that the teacher is just a mature adult with strong teaching skills who could at times simply say "I don't know either, but let's learn how to learn and research the answer together on the internet". As far as the cost of teachers, I need to investigate. Maybe this only works if you have 3 kids. Still one wonders that if a private school has an 8:1 ratio, what they spend the other 5 x $27,500 on. It seems there is some inefficiency in there.

Last edited by thx1138; 10/01/14 08:14 PM.