Some parental advice from all the lovely parentals? Non parentals also welcome :D

[Aroura]

I think the advantage would be that my daughter graduated to a 5th grade reading level yesterday and she is slowly growing to hate school because "it's sooo boring". The academic disadvantage to being in a grade well under your level is that you get frustrated and discouraged. I want her to be somewhere where she can actually learn new things.

You could buy her better books, or send her to the library.  There are academic costs far greater and more tangible than frustration... to skipping (things you cant fix with a new book or a trip to the library).  Skipping grades or starting early is basically locking your child out of high school and collegiate sports, and the advantages that flow from both.  It's also socially alienating, as mentioned by others.

OTOH, keeping her in grade and supplementing at home to reduce her frustration puts her at the top of her class academically, and preserves her potential as an athlete.   It makes her valuable to a college.  How rich do you plan to be when she needs tuition?  I know it probably seems like a weird way to look at the decision at hand....but you're not sending your daughter to school to be fulfilled..really, are you?  You're sending her to school for the education that will afford her a better life.  Why sacrifice that, or reduce that opportunity to satisfy a child's sense of fulfillment?  Particularly when you can provide those challenges yourself...and so can she.

My parents kept my brother in his grade, even though he was so bored he hated it (through middle school and into early high school).  They got him into chess club, and even a couple of community college classes he was interested in.  Although he enjoyed these extra-curricular things, it did not stop him from dropping out of school at the beginning of his sophomore year because he just couldn't stand being so freaking bored for 6+ hours a day any longer (and being treated like he was the problem for sleeping through class, even if he could ace all the test). By then, he had learned to hate organized education.  He refused further college classes, got his GED and is not a truck driver.

The let me move up a grade, and I graduated with honors.  I rather enjoyed school, and continued on to college.  I also participated in high school sports (soccer and track) without any issues.  I am really not sure where this idea is coming from, that being a year younger is somehow socially stifling?

My husband is also in college, and he's met a few kids who are starting college at 16 because they were advanced or home schooled.  It does not seem to be doing them any harm. Quite the opposite.