IF I could do it again, I would homeschool. My kids are both relatively gifted. If you have a gifted child, this is what school looks like: K-5: Extreme boredo

IF I could do it again, I would homeschool. My kids are both relatively gifted. If you have a gifted child, this is what school looks like: K-5: Extreme boredom and anxiety because roughly 1/2 the year is review or test prep. If you are lucky, your child might have a GT teacher. 6-8: Your child will struggle to make friends, especially if they aren't connected to social media. Thankfully, my kids were athletes and musicians but for the smart kids who weren't, I saw a lot of bullying. 9-10: Your kids will learn, but not all that much. They'll start being offered advanced and AP courses, but because of most kids' busy schedules these days, this simply means that they are completely segregated from their friends that aren't "smart." 11-12: Curricula have been gutted, and so your children will leave high school less smart than you are, especially when it comes to history. Your kids will be pushed to take AP courses, not realizing that many of the AP credits they earn wont be honored by many schools depending on their career track. It's relatively safe to say that 30-50% of all of the learning in the K-12 space happens during this time for gifted students. In fact you could probably give kids time off from 6th through 9th grade, and they'd still wind up being 90-95% as knowledgeable as if they hadn't. In contrast, many of the homeschool families I know have kids who learn for 4-6 hours per week. When they aren't learning, they are at co-ops, on field trips, enjoying free play, or learning other skills (woodworking, music, etc). Something is fundamentally broken with our public education system. The system is more stressful, less educational, and far more expensive than it was 20 years ago, and it's putting out students who are in many ways hollow.