I agree with syoblrig, your gut is telling you something is up, and taken in combination with the things you've observed and mentioned in your post, I'd pursue an evaluation. You can request the eval through the school, or you can seek out a private eval - my personal advice is to get the private eval if you can.
The school is legally required to pursue testing regardless of how he is performing in class.
The school is legally required to *consider* testing - they aren't legally required to test. As a parent you make a written request for an evaluation, and that requires the school to convene a team meeting to consider the request based on the parent's concern and input from teachers etc. It's possible that the team will agree and you'll receive the evaluation, but it might also be a very tough situation to successfully advocate through depending on the general attitude at your school on the part of the school staff or philosophy toward SPED evals, and you'll most likely need to provide work samples or data from observations and testing (state testing, classroom testing, or other types of testing) that illustrate your concerns. Our EG ds was in a school district which was stressed for funds and staffing to cover all the needs for testing and services when he was in elementary, and we would not have been able to advocate successfully for an evaluation through our school for our EG ds without having had a diagnosis already through a private neuropsych eval combined with a lot of research on our part re how to approach advocating (we most likely would not have been successful without the advice of a local advocate). It was really clear from the start of our advocacy that the SPED staff and school psychs were not used to seeing a child referred for evals who had such high ability scores, and we found the school staff was constantly trying to put the "reason" for lack of output in written expression back onto things such as lack of motivation or possible ADHD or "really he's doing fine".
The second (and ultimately most important reason) I recommend a private eval is that you'll (typically) get much more information from a private eval - you'll be able to talk freely to the tester and he/she will be able to share information and concerns with you freely without having to put them through a school-district filter. If it's a neuropsych eval your ds will go through not just the diagnostic ability and achievement testing but if an issue is suspected from those tests the neuropsych will administer additional tests to determine what's actually causing the issues. You'll also typically get a plan forward - recommendations on accommodations or remediation, suggestions or referrals for private therapists, and input on which local school programs are the best fit and what to watch out for when advocating at school. Those are all things you typically don't get from a school eval - the school is focused on what your child needs now to be educated in the typical classroom.
Best wishes,
polarbear
