The school didn't deny that DS was gifted, just that he wouldn't be considered for the GATE program until he had taken the test given to the rest of the kids in the spring. It's possible we could have pushed the issue, had we chosen to.
Ours did. We were specifically told that IQ scores at 99.9th didn't necessarily mean gifted b/c IQ alone doesn't necessarily mean that someone is gifted. To be gifted, there has to be a "body of evidence" with "proof" in more than one area (other areas include achievement, personality characteristics, etc.). The fight we had to fight as well was for the district to even accept that IQ was a fair stand in for an ability score. Up to that point, they were only willing to take group tests and were quite sure that group tests were a better measure of ability and not sure that IQ measures ability or aptitude at all.
They will now take IQ as well as group tests, but only for reading and language arts ids and only if coupled with high achievement. I will tell you that getting any support for my 2e kid has been like pulling teeth and we had to pay over $1000 to have her IQ retested on multiple separate measures (WISC IV, SB V, RIAS) and show that she was still in the upper 90s for them to agree that the first WISC scores weren't disproved as "good guessing" by group scores not quite making the GT cut and achievement scores being wildly erratic.
