> My personal solution would be to keep kids in the normal classes, but allow them to opt-in to more challenging course work if they feel they are not being cha

> My personal solution would be to keep kids in the normal classes, but allow them to opt-in to more challenging course work if they feel they are not being challenged (with the ability to take a step back if they need it). I'm not sure this is a great idea, at least not without changes to the normal curriculum itself. I recall middle school math as an extremely frustrating experience. I always grasped the concepts and problem solving techniques very quickly, but it still took a long time to do the work. stuff like dividing polynomials by other polynomials takes a long time to do on paper no matter how well you understand it. no matter how interesting the extra work was, I would never have signed up for it on top of the tedium I was already subjected to from the normal curriculum.