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Here are a number of anecdotes here, both good and bad.

http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Personal_Stories/Default.aspx

As for the idea in general, the negative consequences of leaving a kid at his age level has to be weighed against the negative aspects of acceleration. I would give much more weight to the psychologists who work with the kids on a regular basis than the local schools who encounter one PG kid every few years.

As a child, I was both age-stagnated and accelerated several times and I greatly preferred the acceleration. The times I was with my age peers were very lonely and isolating times for me. I now view my time from age 8 to 15 when I was not accelerated as a complete waste of my abilities.

I like your term "age-stagnated." It helps to emphasize that keeping a child with their age-peers for academics is every bit as big a choice as academic acceleration. I'm going to have to remember "age-stagnated" and use it when questioned by disapproving others!

Stagnated is a good word, but age may not be the perfect prefix.

Subject-stagnated?
Grade-stagnated?

My two cents.....

My son who is 8 has been full grade skipped 4 times to 7th grade. He has been further accelerated to 8th for 2 classes and 10th for another. He gets along really well socially and loves his school. Friends? No, not one child that he considers his friend. Acquintances, schoolmates, but not friends. If he was still in 3rd grade, the results would be the same, he can't connect with his age peers.

That said, he wouldn't change it for anything. He has friends outside of school, a select few that he trusts to take him at face value. Why does a childs social experience have to be relegated to the halls of the school? My son is very social. He gets along well with everyone, he just doesn't consider many people "close friends". He does fine in group projects, he doesn't eat lunch alone and is invited to play Magic with the others.

When you join the work force you don't choose a company or a career based on social aspects, you base it on fit. Getting along in a diverse group is a very important skill, one that will serve him well as an adult. In my mind the "social" argument is an excuse. Coincidentally the same jackass excuse that gets used to dog homeschoolers. Fact is, it's getting harder and harder for schools to justify their actions when all of the studies point squarely at placing children based on ability rather than age.

For your little guy, once testing is complete you will have a snapshot, a better idea of where he needs to be. The Iowa Acceleration Scale will give you a very good idea of whether your child is a good candidate for grade skipping. That is what it is designed for. It takes all of your personal beliefs and baggage, puts them aside and gives you just the facts, ma'am...

Most importantly, and most often dismissed in all of this is the "mommy gut" (or daddy gut). What does your gut say? You know your child better than anyone, what do you think? Don't ever believe that someone with the alphabet strung along behind their name automatically knows whats best. Most of them are biased one way or another, for or against. They don't know your kid, you do.

It's a hell of a ride, trying to raise one of these small people. Trust yourself, let the "Mama" in you ring through and you'll be just fine.

And now, I will climb off my soapbox......

Oh, and I totally agree with the term "stagnate"

Considering your DS is already 6 and in K, I wouldn't even consider buying the social argument about needing to be with "same age peers," assuming your school system has a late summer or early fall cut-off. If you grade skip your DS, there will most certainly be children with birthdays at least close to his. (My younger 2 didn't turn 6 until the summer after Kindy and they are NOT grade accelerated.)

I wrote a paper for my masters program on the information behavior of educators vis a vis acceleration and had concerns about the one sided nature of Nation Deceived (although I very much appreciate it as a resource and have given copies to a number of people). If I was going to cite/rely on a work (or suggest a book to a principal) I would use:

The Academic Acceleration of Gifted Children, edited by Southern and Jones:

http://www.amazon.com/Academic-Acceleration-Children-Education-Psychology/dp/0807730688

I found their approach to be more even-handed and more likely to be accepted by educators - it is a summary of the research that is out there. And, it was published by Teachers College, Columbia University, which many educators will trust far more than a publication by a non-academic entity.

IIRC, there is in fact research that shows that adults who were skipped as children are by and large happy they were skipped, and many wish they had been skipped more years. On the other hand, there is a decent number who wish they hadn't been skipped (I can't recall the specific numbers, but I would guess in the 20% range). Many of the study participants did articulate social difficulties - they just felt on balance their academic needs were more important.

On the social side, it seems that kids who have social difficulties will have them regardless of grade, and those who don't have social difficulties will not have a problem with a skip. While we hear anecdotes about gifted kids who have a hard time with age peers but do better with older kids, this doesn't seem to actually occur all that often. What this suggests of course is that more focus should be on correct academic fit.

So much of it depends on each individual kid. My son has refused grade skips because he doesn't want to leave his crew of friends. We are lucky subject acceleration has worked pretty well. He is pretty bored in his non-accelerated subjects, but he understands the tradeoff. I feel like he understands the social repercussions very well. He is in 4th and starts the day at the middle school for math. He has to wait for school to start outside with the 7th graders and while they are nice to him, he only knows a few of them and they are not friends in a true sense. He can't wait until his friends from his own grade are also at the middle school and he has all his friends with him waiting for school to start. A small thing, but one that matters a lot to him.

Thanks for sharing Catalana. I'll have to see if I can find that book in the library somewhere. I appreciate what you wrote, and it all makes sense to me. My only concern is that the book was written in 1991, so it won't have any of reserach from the last 20 years. But from your description, sounds pretty good to me.

Yes, the book is rather old, and I share your concern. There is other more recent research, but not a book that summarizes it IIRC.