I would certainly consider letting her start High School next year, perhaps skipping into 8th grade now, if a scholarship is a main concern.
She skipped 5th last year and just turned 11 this fall, so she would quite young to move up again. I'm not sure that is in her best interests right now.
What exactly are her concerns about High School? I was sort of assuming that she wasn't near being challenged enough now, so how was she going to hack so many more years of this. What is on her mind?
Best Wishes,
Grinity
No, I think that it is more social. She is still testing advanced on state NCLB tests and in the 99th on reading tests, but she seems to be reasonably adequately challenged right now. She also isn't the world's fastest worker, so adding on a heavier workload in terms of homework, etc. really might be too much for her if we moved her any further forward.
She is feeling like the atmosphere at her middle school is really changing with more and more kids going "emo," I believe she called it. She's describing that as some sort of ultra-goth dress with rather disrespectful kids and there is a lot of cutting going on from what she says. I told her that cutting is a psychological issue, not a lifestyle/clothing choice, but she is just finding that the group of kids are not ones with whom she would like to track to hs.
She has also been riding a bus with kids from the hs she would attend since she started middle school last year and is unimpressed with what she's seen. She reports that a lot of the kids smoke, curse profusely, and are goth.
She wants to be with a different crowd than what she is seeing. We are going to take a look at a hs in the town to the north of us which may have different demographics as well. I think that she'd do best in something like UW Seattle's early entrance program (if we lived in Seattle) b/c she could be with other bright kids who valued education -- peers. It seems like she is finding her peers to be morphing into something she doesn't want to be part of.
