Thanks for your continued responses. An update: the Asst Sup who shut down my appeal has since left the district. Plus we have a new superintendent who comes from a SoCal district that uses multiple criteria. We are meeting with him tomorrow.
Two additional developments:
1) we received my DD's SBAC (standardized test) results and she scored nearly perfect on both literacy and math. (2600 out of 2623 max score on literacy, 2595 out of max score 2621 on math). I know this measures knowledge and not intelligence, but it demos that she has exceeded the curriculum - bear in mind that she's accelerated one year, and she still maxed out the scores.
2) I learned on Friday that not a single student in my daughter's class scored high enough to get into GATE. That tells me this test is missing kids b/c I know a few others who we all anticipated would qualify.
That leaves open the question: Do I advocate to get her into GATE if she's going to be the only one in her class?!? Or do I focus more on working directly with the teacher to cluster her and some of her classmates, despite not being technically in GATE, and get that teacher to give them the GATE coursework anyway.
Not sure how this will all play out, but we have our meeting with the sup tomorrow and I intend to share all my research on multiple criteria, plus my DD's scores on her private testing + SBAC. Hopefully, he'll see the light in that it seems the district has swung too far in the other direction and is now under identifying students who need and deserve these services.
