Well, I feel like we just did this.
So I can give you my thoughts about it about a year later, in case it's helpful. We tested at 4 years 11 months.
Testing itself at that age was a good experience. The psychologist was great with DS and he really enjoyed the test. He thought it was a game.
Other than $$ there was no real downside.
Fast forward a year to K, using those results to get our DS AIG-identified with our school has been a huge amt of effort. In addition, it has accomplished very little. He's supposedly on an IDEP but there's not much "individual" about our IDEP at all. It will be interesting to see how this goes next year when we really push and advocate for more. Even though DS qualifies as "High Need" for gifted services in both Math and LA, they've provided no services at all.
Having said that, I will be advocating more actively for his 1st grade year and I do think the test scores will help at that point. At the very least it gives *ME* more confidence, knowing the data supports my statements. However, I do kind of wish his test scores were more current. To me the scores of a just turned 5 year old are less reliable. I can't predict how school administrators will feel about that in the future. It's actually one question I have as well.
I did find peace of mind in knowing the results and knowing what I was dealing with. The results were close to what I'd guess, but there's a difference between thinking you know and knowing.
I found Deborah Ruf's 5 Levels of Giftedness to be a good predictor of DS's score, FWIW.
We did DS's testing to inform our school choice. It did help. However, for our DD who is younger I think we will wait until mid K or so to do testing, knowing the school really isn't very open to accommodations for K students anyway. We like our school choice and already know we will send her to the same school her older brother goes to.
If you can get into a public self contained gifted program, by the way, I say go for it. That would be amazing. We have something here but it doesn't start until 4th grade. I was in one in 4th - 6th grade myself and it was really a great experience.
