Grinity, wow! What a great approach!
First of all, I wanted to say you are totally correct that having middle ds who is so very gifted (and in SET) has made me see this younger child as fairly average. I think it has distorted my views of my oldest child too. My MIL (who is a teacher) laughs that we have no idea what "normal" looks like.
Along the lines of your suggestion, I could bring in the SCAT scores too for this youngest ds. Last year (in 3rd) this child scored very well compared to students in 5th grade. He qualified for JHU CTY gifted programming in both verbal and math, earning a high honors award for the verbal score. I don't personally think the SCAT means too much (it only tests a couple skills), but it is standardized and it does give us those 5th grade comparison scores, and the school can't say it means nothing at all.
I don't think the school will go for any of it, but it certainly gets discussions moving in a good direction.
Thank you Grinity, masterofnone, and NanRos for all your help and all your terrific suggestions and comments.
