Exactly! Go see what the school has to offer. I think that having her fill out a few worksheets from those workbooks at the bookstore that have the level written right on the front, or checking the lexile level for the books she is reading is a great way to assess the level she is working at now, but visiting the school and observing what they expect of children is the best best best way to know.
I've got a debater also, and if you want her to continue to listen to other children's point, you have a responsibility to get her around other children who can express a point of view worth your daughter's while to listen too, yes? Maybe not all day every day, but maybe, as the school day is a long time for a kid who is 4-8 years of age.
If the coding is 'above average' even with her not staying on task then IMHO you don't have a kid with a spiky profile. Even MG Processing speed is WON DER FUL. Really. My son's coding score on the WISC III was his worst, and that was without a story to explain why at that was at the 25th percentile. And he's in the YSP. So you can see that there is plenty of room to be truly spiky way beyond your daughter's picture. Of course I'll bet I know more kids with verbal scores in the 140s than her assessor does. We had a local assessor and he was not only useless, but dangerous, as he downplayed the LOG, and pointed us off in the 2E direction due to the spread. Since then we've had phone consults with assessors who really have experience with highly gifted kids, and been convinsed that some of the subtests just don't measure giftedness very well.
BTW - if she ceilinged out on verbal, then it probably doesn't make sence to say she is 'shy of highly gifted' as she ran out of test. If she had been tested on a test that allowed her to run to her internal limit, it might have pulled up the rest of the scores quite a bit. You can say, 'She is as high as the test can measure at this time.' Which is what they say over at the Young Scholars Program. There is LOG above what tests can measure, it's just really hard to measure it. Giving your daughter the opportunity to learn at her readiness level will let her show herself in ways that the test couldn't.
Coding on the WISC III involves manipulating a pencil AND lots of eye movements. If it's the same on the wppsi, you can always address those particular areas. If the reading development bogs down, or she's clumsy, you can have her vision-muscles checked and her core strength/fine motor checked. You can always do those things anyway to strengthen up the areas where she is weak just plain due to being younger, IF you see that she needs it once she get the 'least-bad' placement.
I wish so much that classrooms were created with the needs of our young children in mind. But until that happens, looking for the 'least-bad' fit is all that can be done. Both alternatives will have their pluses and minuses, but I'd rather work on 'eye-hand' coordination than have a kid with a poor work ethic on my hands any day.
Hope this helps -
Grinity
