I am having such apprehension about what school to choose for my rising K son and then whether or not to tell the teacher about him before school starts.
Personally, I'm for putting all your cards on the table up front. When I scheduled a visit to our local public school, they gave me only 15 minutes to talk to a school rep, so I decided to cut to the chase. I described the type of work my son was doing, his reading level, etc. and then asked directly how they would handle a kid like him. Much to my surprise, they were equally direct and candid, telling me they wouldn't do anything to meet him where he was at until the one-hour-a-week pull-out program started in the third grade! That's exactly what I needed to hear to be able to scratch them off my list and move on!
As for talking to the kindergarten teacher up front, in a really good school, you won't need to, because they'll do thorough assessments themselves. At the private school my son goes to, they don't officially teach anything for the first two weeks of the year, because that time is devoted exclusively to assessing all students in all core subjects and observing their learning styles. When my son hit the ceiling on their sight word test on Day 3, they did a full formal DRA reading assessment on him. I realize that, unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule, but if you can find a school that is simply open to finding out what your child already knows before they start teaching him, you've won half the battle!
