Early acceleration (early entry or skip in the early grades) appears to work much better than later acceleration. A few kids have skipped 4th grade (the “transition year” that the IAS counsels against), and boy, does it hold true - those kids, no matter how smart they are, really struggle with with writing and languages.
Our son, 11 in February, is in 6th grade also. He skipped 4th. He did very well academically in 5th, scoring on state testing highest in the county in math and highest of the school's 5th grade in Science. He also scored "exceeding expectations" in LA.
Socially, early in this school year, he was bullied and we needed to remove him from that school and place him with Connections Academy. He's in 6th everything except for math, where he has been placed into 8th, Pre-Algebra.
He's scoring very well in this environment, as well. His LA is a high B and the math an A.
Social studies is the bane of his existence...but he's still pulling a low B.
So for us, skipping 4th academically has been no problem. Executive Function for him is, according to the psych eval we did, normal for his age...which puts him at a disadvantage in the higher grade. We're looking into ways to support him for next year when we plan to place him back into a B & M school in another district.
Socially, we were told, and agree, that he's normal for his age. But for him, his ADHD (inattentive type) sometimes causes him to become frustrated and when he is, he tears up. This has been interpreted as babyish behavior by some kids in his prior school and so made him a magnet for bullies.
We've been researching ADHD quite a lot, and working on strategies to help him, so we are optimistic for his coming school year success.
