Hi,
We are looking to buy a house or condo in the Seattle area (Seattle itself, north of the city or Eastside) and I have been doing research into HCC pathways since we�re unlikely to be able to afford anything in the best school districts. The SPS website has a lot of information, but some questions still remain:
� Are some HCC programs better than others? Is there one in West Seattle?
� How does performance in HCC classes compare to area schools in good neighborhoods?
� Are there versions of HCC programs in other towns (Shoreline, Kirkland, etc)? Are these good?
Thanks in advance for any information!

Try asking on discussapp.blogspot.com.

WRT the eastside of Seattle (Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Sammamish, Issaquah)-all of these (Bellevue, Lake Washington(Kirkland/Redmond/Sammamish), and Issaquah school districts have highly capable programs.

Here are some links to help you:
LWSD: http://www.lwsd.org/programs-and-services/accelerated-programs
Issaquah: https://www.issaquah.wednet.edu/academics/programs/gifted
Bellevue: http://www.bsd405.org/programs/gifted/

Most require standardized testing provided by the school (e.g. Cogat,etc.) The schedules for the testing should be listed on the sites by the end of summer for the 2018-2019 school year.

Let me know if you have questions..happy to help.

Thanks a lot for this information! It's a great resource!

State law requires districts to identify and serve highly capable students, and afaik all local districts have some kind of program. However, the entrance matrices, program expectations, and even what the programs provide can be quite different.

In addition to the 3 school districts Laurie listed, be sure to look into Northshore -- it's north of LWSD but the border is not always where you'd expect to be.

If you are moving now or mid-year, be sure to ask districts what they do about people moving in after their regular testing dates.

Also I would not look at test scores alone, especially if your child is 2E or is EG/PG. We left an exceptionally high-bar program in one district because the district was incapable of providing adequate special ed services, and moved to a much less exclusive program where the administration was flexible and welcoming. Our current program is NOT as strenuous and our school is lower-scoring in general, BUT the district has been easy to work with for things like allowing DD to do AoPS math during her regular math time in elementary school. Our previous school's high-scoring program would have allowed her to go up exactly one grade level in math.