DS skipped mid-year from 1st to 2nd, at the recommendation of his 1st grade teacher but with serious push from us against the principal.
I have a few tidbits of BTDT advice for you. Use the Iowa manual! It's huge for reassuring yourself, the school and collecting data to ensure that you're making a well advised decision, no matter which way you go! We knew in our hearts that DS needed a jump but it was easier to swallow all of the "well he'll be too young to drive with his friends!" and "are you sending him away to the dorms at 16?" when we had concrete data to back everything up.
Now, having finished up 3rd grade (1 1/2 years into the skip) we've learned a few things. Your son is older so handwriting has probably resolved itself. But handwriting was a BIG challenge. If we had to do it again, knowing everything we know, I would have had him skip 1st altogether and we would have seriously hothoused writing over the summer. Now I have a grouchy 8 year old, rising 4th grader that I am forcing to learn to write properly so he doesn't get hand cramps. We had an offer to skip him to 6th this year (with a plan to undo it the following) but we couldn't do it because there's no way he'd be able to keep up with notetaking and handwriting in class.
Another situation we encountered was that the principal felt like since he'd finally agreed to the skip, he had done enough. One and done was his rule- no subject acceleration, no further differentiation, take your skip and like it. It was disastrous this year because DS had a BAD teacher who got up every day to prove gifted kids aren't that smart (yes she's the GATE teacher) and the principal wasn't in our corner. We did have the VP an our side and were able to make subtle changes. But that didn't help my 3rd grader who was doing 6th grade math at home and working on single digit multiplication worksheets daily in class!
Good luck with your advocacy!
