Hi cricket3 - you didn't seem dismissive to me, just realistic based on tiring experience.

We don't have the tigers here as much as the more outlying suburbs, the newer places. This is an older and more "established" neighborhood, so what we have are the core group of parents that are coptors but more pushy in an entitlement way, if you know what I mean. They run the PTA, are members of the school board, run the scout troups...there is a core group of kids that are in the pull-out enrichment regardless of intelligence level, they get the parts in the school plays and accommodations in school (not the proper IEP kind, just overlooking broken rules or not handing in homework, where a kid who is not in this core group with get the consequence). The same kids are on particular swim teams, dance troops, hockey and other sports teams. We have no hope of "getting in" it's not what I do, I'm not good at it and have never been able to pull that off.

Slow and steady and lots of meetings and data and patience is the route we'll have to stay on!

I haven't been able to find a grade acceleration policy yet, but it doesn't generally seem to be done. It used to be, judging from speaking with neighbors who have kids who are say 25+ but that seems to be a national trend. A couple of neighbors as well as the gentleman we bought the house from told us what they did with their kids from 6th grade + so it's given me some ideas to work toward.

Thanks for the additional info Jtooit and knute974. I did have the concern about the EXPLORE math since the math skills she is exposed to are very weak. I have books for the curriculum that the local Catholic schools use which is more advanced. And then just alot of ideas or resources for what more robust curriculums include. I try to work with her during the school year but it's hard so we'll do stuff in the summer. If I can get the right approach for math for her she picks it up just fine. We have alot of work to do. She's not a mathy whiz like alot of kids on this forum seem to be, but she can be quite competent, given proper instruction.

I can tell she really doesn't know her multiplication tables very well yet. They only did a minimum amount, the teacher said, to address what would be on the assessment.

They've moved on to little division word problems and I could tell right away she is still weak on multiplication. But she does her usual context-clues and reasoning to work it out (but she can only do this because the problems are quite easy). For example, one was about 7 kids building toy cars and there are 28 wheels, how many wheels does each child get?

They have to write the division equation and the multiplication equation and do a little picture etc. I said, this problem is asking you what you have to multiply 7 by to get 28, do you know what it is?

She said "no, but obviously the answer is 4, because how else are the kids going to get their cars to roll correctly?" And it goes on like that.

Thanks again for all the info. I'll see what this year end brings, what they seem to have in mind for 4th grade and go from there. While she often says she really hates school, the idea of homeschooling doesn't appeal to her. Switching schools for 4th/5th doesn't make too much sense since we don't have an alternative that would be worth the trouble and $$. We're aiming for a change for 6th grade and trying to keep her on some sort of decent track until then.

We put alot of time and effort into outside activities and at least her city music group is a place that is "forcing" her to become more disciplined. She actually has to go through the process of learning, making a bunch of mistakes, practicing, trying again, making less mistakes, etc. They are pretty tough and they can pick out the kids who've gotten used to, at school, getting A's for showing up on time.