With respect to the effectiveness of in-class differentiation, from my son's experience, it is ineffective the way it is usually implemented. What usually ends up happening is the teacher gives the advance kid (after the parents asked for it) some advanced math worksheets to work on in class -- alone, with little to no help or checking from the teacher. Eventually the child loses interest and stops doing it and the teacher just tells the parents well your child isn't interested what can I do.
This is the same experience we had when DS7 was in 1st grade. He was given math packet from the math specialist and was only able to check in with her once a week at the most. He became uninterested of doing the packet after only a few weeks. I don't think in-class differentiation is effective, especially in lower grades. Kids may see this as extra work if they are also doing regular class work (as my son did in the beginning until I asked he only should do the math packet). Also even with high ability kids, without any instructions to self study is not an easy task sometimes.
Our district has the gifted program from grade 3-8. The school may have a pull-out of advanced 2nd graders this year, but not sure how that works yet. In order to keep DS7 challenged and interested in learning, we are hiring a private tutor. Expensive but this is the only way we can do right now so he doesn't think everything is so easy and he doesn't need to work hard.
