I think it's normal to take a hit in terms of percentiles after an acceleration because the child is then being compared to more advanced kids. Most kids who are gifted will then quickly catch up to their classmates once they acclimate to the advanced material. I understand your concerns about how maybe she won't get put into appropriate gifted programming in the future. Hopefully the school has enough common sense to not track a kid indefinitely in a lower group based on a couple tests in a certain time period right after an acceleration. If she stays at 85th percentile, then maybe she doesn't need any more accelerated or enriched placements and you have nothing to worry about KWIM? As long as she is placed with kids who score about the same, she should be challenged sufficiently in school and able to continue to make progress. I don't think it's ever a good idea to try to push a kid into classes where the other kids actually are more advanced. I also would keep in mind that scores like MAP scores in the early grades seem to relate a lot to what the parent is doing with a child and 98th percentile kids might start to drop in 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. So much depends on their cognitive ability level and what is going on at home. My son's reading scores have stayed very high because he is a bookworm and constantly reads but my other child isn't making as much growth because she doesn't read that much at home. As long as she stays at grade level, at least, and isn't struggling in school, I've decided not to stress about it. She was grade accelerated a long time ago. Her perecentiles would obviously be higher if she was compared to kids her age rather than her grade. But the point of an acceleration is so that the child is challenged at the right level and not bored in school.
