I think that many parents fall into the trap of acceleration to address their kids need to be challenged. While acceleration help mitigate some unnecessary repetition, by definition acceleration cannot go deeper than the standard curriculum, and deeper is where things become interesting and where you develop mathematical thinkers.
My children attend a school district where the norm is enrolling kids in after-school math programs. According to the standardized tests run by the school, about 50% of the students are pacing a full grade ahead.
The school does offer an option to skip a grade in math, but the pass rate is a mere 10%. While the skip test covers the standard material, it does so with trickier questions, tripping up many students. They're moving fast, but without much depth.
What I found works best is to pick a challenging and exciting curriculum that allows talented students to immerse themselves and experience the excitement and satisfaction of intellectual discovery. There are a few examples of such programs. The most popular of which is the curriculum offered by AoPS (art of problem solving), which starts at first grade. Following this path naturally offers a large advantage to learning at the highest levels. If they are still moving faster with the rigorous curriculum - sure, let them accelerate.
> The school does offer an option to skip a grade in math, but the pass rate is a mere 10%
I ran into trouble with this as a kid. They put me ahead a grade in math in grade 2 because I could handle it and the class was a 2/3 split (half grade 2s, half 3s), so I just did math with the grade 3s. This worked going forward as there were 3/4 and 4/5 split classes at the school too.
But then after a couple years, I was reaching the point where the school only went to grade 5 and the teachers didn't even have books for grade 6s.
So they skipped me entirely ahead a grade. Into a new school (since the previous school only went to 5). With none of my friends.
My other subjects suffered because I was only really good at math. My social life died- kids are assholes at that age and pull each other down. And my mental health was pretty messed up for a long time. I wound up taking an extra year of high school just so I wouldn't be in college at 17.
Why didn't you want to be in college early? The little fragments of the rest of your story indicate that you may have enjoyed meeting a self-selecting and (presumably) more mature group of peers for a fresh social start. Did your social life recover in high school?
A few reasons. First and foremost: I had lost all will to work hard at all. Between mental health struggles and video game addiction as a means to cope with it, I just wasn't mentally up to the effort needed. I put in the bare minimum and got by because I was clever.
The second reason was that if I had graduated on time, it was a bad year to do it. The province was phasing out 'grade 13', called OAC[0], which had existed for decades as an optional pre-university year for students in high school. It was the last year it existed, so there would be almost twice as many students vying for places in post-secondary schools. Why compete when I could be lazy and have an easier time?
My children attend a school district where the norm is enrolling kids in after-school math programs. According to the standardized tests run by the school, about 50% of the students are pacing a full grade ahead.
The school does offer an option to skip a grade in math, but the pass rate is a mere 10%. While the skip test covers the standard material, it does so with trickier questions, tripping up many students. They're moving fast, but without much depth.
What I found works best is to pick a challenging and exciting curriculum that allows talented students to immerse themselves and experience the excitement and satisfaction of intellectual discovery. There are a few examples of such programs. The most popular of which is the curriculum offered by AoPS (art of problem solving), which starts at first grade. Following this path naturally offers a large advantage to learning at the highest levels. If they are still moving faster with the rigorous curriculum - sure, let them accelerate.