Thanks for the compliment on my son. I frequently find it hard to evaluate his abilities because I see it everyday and it's just "normal" stuff to me. It usually takes someone making a comment for me to step back and realize that not every kids does the things he does.
Since we do homeschool, I have him take the tests every year because it's my only outside source of evaluating him. He doesn't mind them (he always get a special breakfast out to eat with dad before the test) and it really helps me get a sense of where he's at and what we still need to work on. I just wish they had something harder than the ACT so I could continue to track progression.
I've known since DS was 10 months old that we would homeschool (and I didn't even know he was gifted then) so we have never even looked at a school. However, I always thought when he went to high school I would have him take science or a foreign language at the the school because I hate those subjects (our state laws allow for taking 1 class in the public schools starting in Jr high I think and still being considered a homeschooler). The person who did our initial testing is a counselor in our school district full time (and does private testing as a side job) so she was able to tell me a lot about our school district. The biggest obstacle is not only is he years ahead in math but he is several years behind in emotional development. At the time he was 8 and was ready for an 8th/9th grade class but was emotionally about 6 years old. The tester flat out told us, that our school district would never be able to really meet his needs (we were really only talking math at this point) because they had no options for taking an elementary student to the high school for classes. Even if I provided transportation, really would I WANT my 8 year old taking classes with 14, 15 year olds? Tester flat out said the best thing I could do for him was to keep homeschooling him. Which really helped my resolve when someone who works full time in the school district said he didn't belong there.
So no I've never really tried to work with the school district and I'm not likely to start now. My challenge is to find college level stuff because our state law prevents anyone under 15 taking in-person classes and I have no idea how to go about evaluating on-line classes (my hubby got his bachelor's degree through an on-line program and it was a horrible excuse for education in my book so I'm really gun-shy about them)
So is your son a DYS? Or are you just thinking about applying?
