This is one of the reasons why we rejected the GT program as being sufficient by itself; DD needed a full year acceleration AND the gifted program.
I'd count acceleration as a form of differentiation. And yes, it was utterly essential for us too.
They didn't offer acceleration, either. We had to find a way to foist it on them.
They just offer the G/T daily pull-outs, but that's not nothing. It's just that in my HG DD's case, that's a good start, what else ya got?
My experience is that many schools don't offer acceleration as a matter of course; it requires significant advocacy and a compelling case, including data. Accelerations are a scheduling nightmare (and don't let anyone tell you it gets easier in middle school & high school), and risk-adverse administrators are weary of testing consequences. As teacher evaluations are increasingly dependent upon student test scores, many teachers are also proving unwilling to have a top student leave the room, and many are unwilling to risk having an accelerated kid score poorly and therefore count against them.
I've had good luck on advocacy by being aware of the problems and working as best we can to prove testing won't be a problem and to work within the system on scheduling.
