My best friend lobbied to get his son into the "gifted" program when he just missed the cutoff. As explained to me, the gifted class is accelerated over the regular class by 3 months. My thought was, "Why bother?!"
Some gifted programs are not 'allowed' to acclete over the regular class at all! Some school believe that enrichment is the only acceptable thing to do with 'pull out gifted program.'
People seems to surround themselves with friends and family members who are more or less similar to themselves. So you may know tons of folks who could move academically at one, two or three years ahead of the school standards. But schools deal with large groups of kids. In these large groups, most kids are learning near their readiness level. Most gifted kids are well served by the 'only 3 months accelerated' program.
My beef is when the school go from thinking that programs meet the needs of the whole gifted population in stead of just a majority, and blame the child for being 'off-task' or 'class clown' even 'After all the special treatment we have given you!'
Homeschooling really takes the pressure off in a lot of ways, doesn't it?
Hope this helps,
Grinity
