It took the school system until the end of the 5th grade to figure out that she was gifted, and while I now have no doubt that she is gifted, highly gifted seems like a bit of a stretch.
I suspect you're thinking of "highly gifted" as equating with high academic achievement in traditional schools (which is often how it's defined by educators too :)). There really isn't any rule of nature that says people with extremely high ability are also going to be the highest achiever in school or that the highest achievers are always the students with the highest ability. There is more that plays into high achievement in school than simply ability - motivation, passion, caring about grades, having certain types of academic strengths etc. Sometimes the highest ability children are simply going to be bored in regular school and not care about their grades. Sometimes the not-quite-so-highest-ability kids are going to be so driven by their personality type that they will achieve great things.
I am not a testing expert, but I believe the PSAT, and the SAT, both have components of the test that are dependent on ability, not achievement in school - so it's not going to be so terribly easy for a student who is simply getting great grades to score super-high on either if they don't also have high ability - so I think it's more than likely that your dd is HG and has some pretty amazing intellectual abilities
Maybe she just hasn't found what she's passionate about yet.
Congrats to your dd on her great scores!!!
polarbear
