I think it really depends on the individual teacher that your child has. Our son is in a great public school system. Full grade acceleration is not uncommon here, and there are currently 8 elementary kids who are transported up to the Middle School/Jr. High for subject acceleration. (and we are a very small school district, so 8 is an impressive number) However, even though we have an 8 year old in 4th grade, with a subject acceleration to 7th grade in Science, he is still having a rough year because several of his teachers this year just don't understand the needs of a HG+ student. Last year he was incredibly lucky to have both a 2nd and 3rd grade teacher, due to mid-year acceleration, who really understood his need to be challenged. They were happy to give him differentiated assignments in math and reading in order to keep his mind stimulated. This year,
not even a whisper of differentiation. He is reading a group assigned AR book with a AR level of 3.3, when he tested on the first day of school on an AR level of 8.7. The teacher does not see a problem with that. <sigh!! ... "But it should help his writing if he is working on an easier reading level", says the teacher. "Not if it is so simplistic that he barely skims through the book", say his parents!>
So even within a single public school, you are going to have good teachers and not so good teachers. I guess the overall climate in our school district is supportive of highly gifted kids. They are giving the gifted elementary kids the Explore test soon, just so that they can have out-of-level data on what these kids need. The powers that be higher up in the food chain understand levels of giftedness and want data to see where the gifted kids are and what their academic needs are. And they have decided to find a high school student as a mentor for our DS8, so that he can talk to someone about taking classes and social interactions. So our school does
try quite a bit. But sometimes the everyday classroom teachers need a bit of enlightening!! And since that is where your child spends most of his or her time, it can make a world of difference.
