Well, he's off to the first round of testing at the DAS-II.
And apparently he was given a reading and spelling assessment today, and when I picked him up after school he quickly told me about it, and that he'd done great. I was a little nonplused-- how would he know that?-- until he told me that the reading specialist had let him see the marks as he went (0 for wrong answers and 1 for right ones, apparently) and even had nodded and said "good" to each right answer. Weird. Is that a valid technique for increasing confidence? Maybe she just says "good" after every question, to increase confidence? Anyway, the result of that is that he's stoked to take the DAS-II.
Many thanks, again, to all who helped me. I am terrible at tracking replies to my threads... have to get better.
ETA: He says the tests were fun, and he's excited to go back tomorrow. So at least he's not being traumatized.
