Practices such as MAP testing may ease placement decisions, facilitating acceleration. Practices of evaluating teachers/schools/districts based upon standardized test results may work against acceleration because these are tied to a pupil's grade level; Advanced students, when denied acceleration, are believed to boost the standard test scores of a class and therefore reflect positively on a teacher/school/district.
Indigo, I seem to remember that there is data showing that accelerated kids often are at the top of the higher grade. I think there are citations in A Nation Deceived. My daughter had the highest standardized test scores in her grade after being accelerated. Maybe this information might be reassuring to schools.
We found it just wasn't possible to work out something with the regular schools because they wanted kids to specifically practice questions in standardized test format even if they knew the material and because they just weren't able to be very flexible.
We found that standardized placement tests didn't help much. I was told my daughter could skip some things based on testing, but it never actually happened even when I arranged for and paid for he testing myself.
