We need some advice/ perspective on school selection for our DD who tested as gifted (WIPPSI Full Scale IQ 144, very verbal). She is eligible to start kindergarten this fall. My DH and I are quite conflicted about the choice of right school for her. Please give us your opinion.
1) Keep her for 1 more year at her Montessori. She goes to a full-day program. The school has a good balance with arts, music, languages (once a week french and spanish)
2) Local Public school(Free) --> We live in silicon valley and although CA schools seem to not rank very well nationally, our local school is considered good with API scores of 957. However K is only 3 hrs.
2) Private School that is traditional and very academic ($14K/yr). Not much else beyond academics. Claims to teach all kids at Grade+1 level.
3) Private School that is very expensive ($25K/yr) that is traditional but follows a differentiated track from Kindergarten for Language arts and Math. They have 3 levels (Grade, G+1, G+2). Small groups and subject teachers. Lots of extra curricular from swim, music, dance, arts, performing arts etc.
4) A new gifted private school that is very small but seems to have a lot of experienced faculty that focus on 'Constructivist' teaching model. This school is very small (10-15 kids max in elementary) and is quite new (just 2 yrs old). But they have language immersion for part of the day (chinese or French) and seek to provide an environment for gifted kids based on testing. My DH feels that 'constructivist model' feels too new-agey and is not sure if at the end of 3rd grade we can be sure that the kids will be ready for public school. I am concerned about the small size and frankly don't know enough about how parents feel about this approach.
How would you go about deciding.
