As a follow up to my original and secondary posts in this thread, we've found a center that does reading and spelling evaluations rather than the full battery of psychoeducational tests. The cost difference is $500 versus $1500, and we already have WPPSI testing from last year showing average processing speed versus gifted level verbal, etc. scores. We're not experiencing any other issues (behavioral, motor skills or coordination, etc.), so we feel that the more focused testing will give us the information we need. We're moving forward with the testing in December. They'll make recommendations for the type of tutoring he needs. Thanks to all, particularly polarbear's response to my second post in the thread, for your suggestions; they've been so helpful in determining a path forward.
This morning, we were doing phonics at home since he misses it at school to go to math in the next grade up, and DS said "Mom, do you know how I figure out hard words? I skip them. Write me a sentence with a hard word, and I'll show you." He read the sentence out loud, skipping the hard word and reading all the rest of the words around it. He said said "See, that's what I do, and most of the time I can figure out the hard word without sounding it out." !! Confirmation that he's doing what we thought he'd been doing.
