A good/great school to the average Joe has absolutely no relation to a good/great school for a gifted child!
Perfectly put! We have some experience with options that sound very much like the ones you are choosing btwn. To me, a school should have above avg scores for the state (like a 7 or so on Great Schools), but the difference btwn a 7 and a 10 is generally irrelevant for a gifted child. It tells me how many kids they can get up to average. If it is a lot of them vs. all of them, so what? I'm not looking for average and my kids will score at least that well even if you do nothing for them.
If they can't even get half of the kids up to avg on a state test, on the other hand, then I have a concern about their population having a lot of kids who won't be peers for a gifted child or poor teachers.
Dds attended a charter for one year which offered subject acceleration and sounded quite similar to what little you have posted about your local charter. Ours is currently ranked at a 4 on Great Schools. Locally, we have a lot of schools in the 8-10 range, so that looks bad to me. They did tend to draw a lot of troubled kids with serious behavioral problems or kids who weren't making it elsewhere. There were so many other problems at this school, that they had regular teacher turn over & a lot of novice teachers (as well as some who weren't certified), which also made for inconsistent education. A low Great Schools ranking wouldn't be an automatic "no," but it does raise a red flag & I'd look further. How do the parent ratings look on that site?
