BACKGROUND: Last week I had a meeting at school to talk about what the options were to meet my child's social and academic needs at school. In summary, school expressed social/emotional concerns about skipping and that no one ever heard of anyone skipping a grade in our high performing district ever, ever but principal would check in to policy. This week my child reported being given math worksheets 3-4 years out of his grade level on 2 different days.

Then today I got an email saying that after discussions about policy and working with the Assist Super. they have decided to test my child with the end of 2nd and end of 3rd "local" testing as a "first step" in determining the best placement for him.

I almost fell over. He is in Kindergarten. I'm thrilled... and stunned... surprised. We think he is somewhere around 3rd/4th in his math ability and know he reads on a 5th grade level. We ceilinged out a bit on testing and fell just below DYS levels.

On the 2e side, we also think he is having a vision issue and are in the process of testing that out right now. We have a 2hr sensory motor testing visit with the developmental vision optometrist next week and then another testing visit after that. He is seeing things move and struggles with reversals, especially in math.

I do not know why the drastic shift in response happened. I did share our test results from a couple years ago and linked the Psychologist to the Iowa Scale as well as an article here.

He struggles with handwriting and I am not sure if his pencil/paper skills can stand up to testing. I expect he may have a few gaps in knowledge as well.

I'm feeling really overwhelmed by the response... in a good way I think. I would truly love to have some of you who have done multi-year skips help me think through what I need to ask and advocate for my child with the testing. My concerns are that he has a definitely has a processing issue (is it visual or dysgraphia or both or something else??--we just don't know) and ADHD. I do not know the nature of how this testing will be conducted or when.

I think they are really listening (WOW!!) and seem open to considering how out of level my child is. I want to be very sure not to negatively impact this shift towards what he needs but frankly the possibilities seem broader than I imagined and scare me a bit.

I need to respond to the principal this weekend with my appreciation and questions. Wow. Still totally floored by this response. (Sorry for my rambling!)

Last edited by HappilyMom; 05/06/13 04:40 AM.