Thanks, aeh, for the science and the story. Your answer is more or less what I expected to hear, but wanted to check anyway. It would be nice if there were a simple, non-stigmatizing answer.
Re: the school's assessment of boredom, I'm not sure. I know they do MAP testing to inform placement; DD tests above the median for her class in tested subjects, but not, like, stratospherically high. Though frankly the mean score for all subtests and all classes hits the 99th percentile, and I'm not clear on how much to make of relative ranks between kids on that test when everyone's way out in the right tail. I do know they considered giving her above-grade MAP this year as an add-on to the grade-level one, but I suspect they didn't actually do it (I wouldn't have; asking an already-squirrely kid to sit still for a second round of testing seemed to me like asking for trouble, frankly).
A major reason for me wanting to put DD in the gifted school (apart from the obvious) was the expectation that I could leave placement decisions to people who are actually qualified to make them. Words can't express how itchy this stuff makes me... But your question gives me an idea for how to broach the topic: start with the suggestion that since nothing's been successful so far, we should revisit all the possible causes of the misbehavior and lay out what sort of data would support them. Then in that conversation I can say something like, I know the psychologist mentioned boredom as a possible cause but she also mentioned you are pretty confident that's not what's happening; can you walk me through how you assess that? Sort of like burying kale in a fruit smoothie; maybe they won't even notice...
