My state lets schools set the criteria for their gifted programs. It made it a little tricky to transfer schools
Similar to you, our old district did just pull outs for kids 3rd and above.
Because our old school was painfully slow at sending records, I ended up providing my copies of previous testing. They took the Stanfords and OLSAT for my 10yo. We homeschooled last year, but they would not take our CAT testing since they only wanted to rely on testing performed by another school or their own. So please bear that in mind if you think about doing your own testing.
Will they let you request testing? Our new district had a parent referral form or teachers could do the requesting. I recommend you be the ones to request, though. I seemed to have better luck transferring in (as much trouble as it was) than parents have when they request the testing.
FWIW, I was told by our son's K teacher that they really didn't do math. That is, their sole focus was on getting everyone to read in Kinder. I'm sure math was touched on peripherally, but there were no 1+1=2 sheets coming home, that's for sure! So their "assessment", unless it was some kind of standardized test, is not one I'd put much stock in. A lot of teachers through the years would do the PALS testing for my kids and they were at grade level, only because they stopped at grade level. They didn't want to waste the time continuing the test to see what the true grade level was.
Our old district, which wasn't keen on grade skips, would let some kids visit a grade ahead's classroom for reading or math, as appropriate. It might be a stepping stone to getting a skip later if they are open to this type of arrangement now.
