My son started school just a couple of weeks ago. The school appoached me about the possiblility of enrolling him. They knew he existed because as a foster parent I've had many children in their school. They told me that they had been discussing the idea of making some sort of fully differentiated program in the district for quite some time and wondered if I would be willing to work with them to see if they could come up with a plan for my son. That's actually how his testing came about.
He is currently in several different classes, Kindergarten, 3rd for Art, Library, Computer and Language Art. 4th for gifted Math and he spends an hour each day with the gifted teacher for reading. They have the teachers within the classes differentiating further still. The school gave him the NWEA the second day and he tested into 5th, but I don't want him with kids that are that much older. They are trying really hard to make this work.
The problem comes with the knowledge that by the end of this year, he will have completed his elementary school work. At 5, I can't reasonably expect him to go to middle school. We have been talking about the possibility of moving to a different state that offers more opportunity for him. This is all very new and I've only begun to explore the possibility of moving. It may be that the best choice is to homeschool with the help of tutors etc. At this point I don't really know. But I feel like he will be able to complete this school year where he's at, so I want to use this time to figure out what comes next.
About the only thing i've managed to figure out so far, is that everyone agrees that these decisions have to be individualized to the specific child. That means getting myself educated, so that I can make the best choices for him.
