Our experience has been with CTY middle school (online) courses... so take it fwiw. My ds *loves* the courses he's taken... and they haven't really added any huge burden of extra work into his day. He's basically flown through the courses very quickly (except when he's run into technical IT-type issues, which has happened). From my perspective, the downside to the CTY courses is the expense.

I am not sure what the answer will be for your child, but I'd encourage you to do something to advocate at school no matter what you do outside of school. My ds was in a "regular" public school for K-5 and we *thought* his intellectual needs were being sufficiently challenged, and suddenly at the end of 5th grade ds simply told us he was "done" with the school - unbeknownst to us he'd ben bored beyond tears for *years* but just never said anything to us. There are things you can do with an individual school - one thing you can do is to offer to work with a group of the more highly capable kids in the class, maybe once a week, giving them some differentiation. Another thing that one of the kids in my ds' current school does is an independent study set-up where he works through a CTY course online in the library while the rest of his class studies the same subject together in the classroom. Another thing my kids always loved was when parents came in and taught the full class about something they were either an expert at or were interested in or was a hobby etc. Maybe you could help encourage that type of thing from a few different parents so kids could see a wide swath of career paths etc.

The other thing I'd watch out for - is your ds on a waiting list for the gifted magnet, and if so, do you think there is a chance he will ultimately have a spot offered to him? If so, will he have to requalify on any kind of achievement test? If that scenario is a possibility, I would see after schooling and advocating for him as essential, so that he doesn't fall behind his gifted peers and lose his opportunity to join in with them when/if it does happen.

Best wishes,

polarbear