Today I spoke with his teacher. She didn't think he was ready to be grade-accelerated. His science and math are definitely above grade, but she felt that his reading and writing are not. It's not about the reading comprehension and getting the facts, but forming his own opinion and making connection. On the other hand, his SRI in 4th grade was 1137 and he got 88 percentile on his verbal SCAT.
To me, keeping a kid with agemates while meeting their academic needs is always better than a full grade acceleration - better, but if the costs of homeschooling or private school that might be able to do that are just too high for a particular child or family, then full grade acceleration is a totally reasonable choice. The needs of the whole family, including the Parents, count.
Some kids can never get their academic needs with agemates, and there is no private school that could pull off this cool trick. If the tradeoff is stay with agemates and don't learn good work ethic, then gradeskips become more obviously needed.
I don't know what a SRI is - but it would be good to get him to take some, locally used end of year test that is used for the recieving grade and see how he stacks up against kids in the recieving grade. The goal of a grade skip isn't to put a child in a situation where they are average in the receiving grade - the goal is to put them in a situation where they can make As if they put in a reasonable for their age effort. There is a great book called the Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual for about 40$ that turns this into a mathmatical prediction. But you can tell from looking at the classwork. You can ask that your son be given a few English assignments from the one-year-older class and ask that he be graded anonymously on them. If he's doing B work without any help already - that's perfect!
Do you see you child having trouble forming his own opinion and making connections when you discuss movies and TV shows or books? Gifted kids can be quite literal, and it's wise to look around for any family history or indications of AS, but in some ways it's harder to make a personal connection to 'See Dick Run' sort of material.
Some gifted kids just don't even read fiction for pleasure. Does your son ever choose fiction for pleasure reading? If so, does he seem to relate personally to the work? If so, perhaps you could ask the teacher to 'chat him up' about his favorite book and subtly evaluate his ability to form his own opinion and make connection. Or better yet ask a teacher from the recieving grade who doesn't have a preconcieved notion to do the chatting.
But remember that most teachers think that getting As without effort is a fine thing, and feel 'bad' when they project what it would be like to go from 'Easy As' and academic domination to 'Easy Bs and just being one of the gang.' They are aware that this can be a painful transition and are loath to impose that on someone else's child. You however are taking the longer view. Better to feel the pain now and have several years of good work ethic before college than to go through this experience while on one's own at College, when the support is less and the stakes are lower. If you ask many teachers about this, then they would say, 'Of course, you can always transfer to an easier College. What's the problem?'
There is almost no way to explain that the pain of having all that excess potential rattling around. The folks here could tell you about it in great detail, but it isn't such a vital part of the ND experience. As a co-worker once told me in my first years of work, "I can see that you are experiencing a lot of stress because you care so much, don't worry, in a few years you'll get used to it and it won't bother you anymore."
He thought he was being kind and wise. I was mortified. What actually happened was that many years later I became a parent and had a fabulous distraction!
Back to you - I ended up taking the non-verbal approach when this subject was raised, I'd say something criptic like 'he does best when he has heavy rocks to carry, I'm sure you've known kids like that' and project a wise, confident, fraternal tone. This doesn't always work, but there are some expectation differences that are best left unexplored. Like the time in 3rd grade when I told the Principle of local el that I expected that at age 12 my DS would be taking the SATs as part of a talent search. She turned white as a sheet. I thought I was going to have to catch her in a swoon.
Hope that helps,
Grinity
