Thank you, aeh - your explanation made a lot of sense and helped clarify many questions that the district has not been willing to answer. From what we understand, they started with the full battery in some schools and it was such a disaster as far as IT problems that they switched to just the screener. I have no idea what cutoff % they were aiming for but I know that with the Raven in previous years, they had identified 18% of all students as GATE which was quite inflated and one of the reasons for the switch. I wonder if they are using that catchment range properly. I also don't know if they were using local or national percentiles - that would be very interesting to find out. It's a very large diverse district which does not skew to a high-performing (although some schools are definitely more so than others).
I'm honestly not set on him getting a GATE identification, I just want to make sure that the process was fair and accurate and that regardless of his identification that he is challenged next year. This past year he was often bored in class (no differentiation by the teacher) and I know at least in math he could have moved at a much faster pace.
