You touched on this with the no age based classes, but in my perfect school, each specific subject would be scheduled at the same time for all levels, ex. Math instruction would be at 8:00am for everyone in the school. That way each student could go to the class that matches their interest and ability regardless of age or grade. The next class might be science, where again the child woud attend the class that matched their ability. After that Language Arts, and so on. Each child's stranghts and weaknesses could be accomodated for that way.
Our school (middle ) was doing it for two years and it did not work. But don't get me wrong, I thought it was a perfect scenario, however the practice have proven me wrong. First of all, there was just not enough top notch kids in the school to fill that highest level class with truly the highest level thinkers. For my son, whether he was grouped with random kids or with the highest achieving ones, the result was still very, very similar. Second, by doing this they had every teacher teaching every subject. Unfortunately, not all teachers are equally good, passionate about all the subjects. Not all were very good in Spanish (required in that school), not all were passionate about math. You get the picture.
So while in theory this looked perfect, it proved to be not such a good scenario for my gifted child.
My dream school would be for my kids to be sorrounded by the kids the same caliber. Meaning onl the top 1/2% for my son, only the top 5% for my daughter. Impossible to achieve. Buth think about it. There is a huge gap between the kid scoring at 80% (considered gifted in our school district) and the one scoring at 95%. There is even wider gap between 95% and 99%.
So our dream school would have to be very, very small.
