ITA with Old Dad.
Re the OP, I wonder if, in this instance, the thing to do might not be to give up the fight for this school year (since it's half over anyway). Starting your advocacy next year might be easier and more effective when you have a different teacher to work through. Fighting it now is most likely (just my guess) going to peg you as a parent who is going to fight to make sure your ds isn't left out of a program - note - this is *not* a "bad" trait at all, but it can be perceived negatively, especially in early elementary when there are a lot of parents who think their child needs to be included in all the available gifted programs. When our kids were in early elementary, there were so many other parents who also had "intellectually gifted" and "intellectually deserving of more" kids - according to the parents. Many of those parents were quite pushy, and it led to a lot of resistance on the part of the school staff when *any* parent tried to advocate for that "more" for their student, no matter how truly intellectually gifted their student was. What ended up happening was that sometimes the really pushy parents got their kids into the pull-outs or programs etc simply because they wouldn't take no for an answer and the school staff gave up. Other kids were overlooked. After the first few years of elementary, the kids who were in the programs because of pushy parents either thrived because they needed to be there, or moved out of the programs because they really didn't belong there. The kids who'd been overlooked - at least some of them - I can't speak for all - but at least some of them stood out more as being different as they moved on in school and many who teachers had overlooked were "discovered" once state testing and other types of testing such as gifted screening happened in 2nd/3rd grade.
Our eg ds was not one of the kids who stood out as obviously gifted or needing accelerated work in early elementary - it was frustrating to not have him given access to the accelerated work in his first years of school, but fwiw, just to offer a little bit of upside - not having that early recognition and inclusion didn't stop him from being the eg kid that he is, and ultimately he got into the gifted programs and advocating was much easier once we were past those first few years of almost every parent thinking their child was gifted.
Best wishes,
polarbear
