Could he benefit from accommodations? Could he benefit from a 504? Perhaps so, but it would be difficult to convince the school we're not just trying to game the system AND, most importantly, our ds doesn't want to appear different in that way. He doesn't want extra time. He'd rather get a lower score.
I totally understand your thoughts KADmom and respect that you want to respect your ds' wishes
I would like to throw a few thoughts out here just for food-for-thought. First, there's a little bit of wiggle room where any of us could benefit from certain accommodations - most of us can type faster than we can write, for instance, and there are going to be some tests that most of us will run out of time on. It's also true that it's tough to advocate for accommodations for a high-achieving student (or actually even for a middle-level achiever in many instances). But if there really is some type of not-so-obvious challenge that is causing the issue, it's a good idea to try to understand what's up and to advocate for the accommodations. It's one thing to be ok with getting a lower score when you're in middle school and even high school perhaps, but what happens when an EG kid takes the MCATs without accommodations trying to get into medical school when the peers he's competing with are also typically HG+/EG? This is just one example, but there are undoubtedly other situations that might occur depending on where a student who is now a middle-school kid might one day find he/she wants to be for the career they decide they want to pursue or for entry into a university program they really really want to be in. I mentioned the MCAT situation because this happened to a relative of mine who is dyslexic but didn't have accommodations while in school. She was more than capable of being a doctor and had professors who thought she should absolutely be in medical school and most importantly - being a doctor was her dream. Yet she couldn't get her reading-associated scores of standardized tests high enough to qualify for the programs she wanted to be in. Her scores were high, just not high enough - and the issue was - she always ran out of time. Trying to get accommodations such as extended time was tough as an adult without a history of having had the accommodations during her early school years.
Re looking different, my ds is extremely sensitive about this - but extended time is one accommodation that really doesn't "look" all that different from other students. It depends of course on the test, the assignment and how it's handled by the school, but for the most part, this is one thing ds never flinched over in terms of thinking he appeared different.
Best wishes,
polarbear
