Congrats to your DD, madeinuk!
We did the same thing with our oldest DD last year as an 8 year old 3rd grader. We scheduled her for the EXPLORE just to give her that experience and to give us some idea of where she was at on an above-level test. We were secretly hoping maybe she would give us some ammo for a DYS application too.
We had concerns she wouldn't be able to focus or take the test seriously and we probably did have some of that going on. We too told her to make sure she answered all the questions and she said she did. She was the only 3rd grader testing, obviously the smallest kid in the room, and there were some pretty rambunctious older boys also taking the test - one boy was asked to leave during one section since he had finished early and was disturbing the others. DD told us she didn't use the calculator at all on any of the math and the stories in the reading section were boring (she admitted later that she zipped through that part). This explained to us why her reading score was low when we anticipated it to be her highest score. (She later took our state assessment test and scored "exemplary" in reading, so I know her reading score on the EXPLORE does not exemplify her best work)
We thought about having her take it again this year to see if she made any progress and especially after hearing it wouldn't be offered again after this year, but we didn't. I haven't looked into the replacement test at all, so we will wait and see how things go before signing her up for any other testing.
The best thing we got out of the EXPLORE was the write up NUMATS sent us. It lined out the next several years for DD and what she should be doing academically. We presented this at her end of the year GIEP meeting and hope they will take some of the suggestions into consideration.
