I tend to agree with the reading scores, particularly after stumbling across a lot of AR (Accelerated Reading) data. LOTS of 6th grade kids that fall nicely in that "bright, but not really gifted" range hit 12.9+ scores on AR. (I have actual WISC data from several of these kids, and know of others that were turned down from our GT program).
All of those kids would be in our GT program in the more liberal GT district locally. Any kid who is testing advanced on the NCLB tests and a few years above level on lexile is prepped with critical thinking pull out classes and practice tests and tested over and over on tests like the CogAT until they hit close to the mid 90s on the verbal part and are then deemed gifted and guaranteed placement in GT literacy classes through high school based upon that id.
I do believe that this is part of the reason dd11 wants to move back into the district to our north for high school. While the north district has its own set of problems with overidentifying high achievers and underindentifying gifted underachievers, they don't call more than, say, 20% of their kids gifted (still quite likely an overestimation) as opposed to 40%+ of kids in some of the schools in the south district. She feels that the level of instruction is higher in the north district as a result. When you have so many kids who are clearly not gifted in the GT classes, it does tend to modify what you can do & teach in those classes.
