I think it's impossible for any of us to know since we don't actually have children in these schools, but, like others have posted, we also chose not to send our EG ds to our district's HG gifted middle school program because the parents I knew who'd sent their kids through it all had the experience that the interpretation of what to do with HG/HG+ kids was to pile on more homework and the kids had very little time for any kind of extracurricular much less time (either in school or outside of school) to just *BE* and to nurture their own amazing imaginations and creative abilities.
So - talk to anyone and everyone you can. Checking in with the principals (and counselors) at both schools is a good idea, as well as networking with as many other parents as you can. One pp mentioned parents will complain about homework no matter which program because homework in general across the board increases in middle school - that's true, there are going to be higher expectations across the board for homework no matter what school your child attends, but listen to what parents have to say - it was easy for me to quickly see that the homework load at our gifted program was out of sync with homework load in other schools by asking a few simple questions about how long their children spent on homework most nights, was their homework over the weekend typically, over breaks, and what type of homework were their children doing.
Another person who was a helpful resource for me when we were going through the middle school decision was ds' gifted program teacher from elementary school. We didn't go with her recommendation, but I took to heart something she said and then went my own way from there - she was telling me all about the wonderful things about the honors track in my neighborhood school (which is populated with a ton of gifted kids).. and she said one simple thing in answer to a question I had "Your child is going to be bored no matter what school he goes to." That was the first time for me that I'd realized any teacher had realized my ds needed something "really more" - up until then his teachers just communicated that clearly he was smart, but he needed to be doing what everyone else was doing. Hearing that from his gifted teacher, for whatever reason, gave me the extra motivation I needed to move forward and look into what I needed to do differently for him, and we ultimately went with a school program that was academically advanced by one year across the board, had a high percentage of gifted kids, and also had teachers who were very willing to challenge ds and let us (parents) help encourage him and give him opportunities to go above and beyond. Note - it's *not* a gifted school and advertises that it's important to challenge all kids, no matter what their intellectual ability. The key is that the teachers are very attuned at meeting the child where the child is as an individual, and they don't translate HG into "let's pile on more projects and extra homework".
Good luck as you look through your options!
polarbear
