I'm philosophically of the "don't test unless the results would change something" school of thought, so have been hesitant to do any testing of DD7 without a goal in mind.
The goal I have in mind is "figure out what school placement would be least-worst for next year." Some of the options would require testing if we picked those options, but I'm wondering if testing before we got to the picking stage would be helpful.
At the moment, we're taking private school off the list of options, and I'm happy to explain the specifics of why, but for the moment, the reason is that they're more-worst compared to public. Likewise for homeschooling, which DD is lobbying for, but which both parents think would be a fiasco due to personality issues.
The public school options are:
- Attempt another full-grade acceleration. Both parents are opposed to this one, and I can't imagine that DD would agree to it, even if we were in favor. (She blames all of her social woes on the grade skip, including the one that goes "I wish I were in second grade, because third graders like SpongeBob and I don't like SpongeBob.")
- Leave her as a 4th grader for all subjects. All of us would be happy with that in theory, but I'm afraid she's going to be intolerably bored. (She's already towards the top of the class and complaining of boredom as a 3rd grader, following a full-grade skip of 2nd.)
- Subject accelerate in any combination of math / language arts / social studies / science (where acceleration in all would require a full skip by definition, and acceleration in both math and language arts would lead to pressure by the school to do a full skip). I think all of us are iffy on this one - it's hard to do the scheduling / coordination, and it makes her a weirder kid than she already is. But it would give her continued contact with her current group of friends.
Her real issue is pacing, not "I've mastered the material prior to it first being taught," and from what we've seen so far, acceleration does not completely solve the pacing issue.
I had hoped that she would be the moderately-gifted kid who found her place after one skip. I think I haven't given up hope that she'll be the moderately-gifted kid who finds that work gets hard in middle school, and is glad she only skipped once. I wish she were the kind of kid I had been, who balanced boredom with underachieving inattentiveness, instead of feeling that she has to pay attention and follow directions. (One of her journal entries was an apology to her teacher for working ahead during the math lecture!) I'm afraid she's a more-gifted-than-I-was kid.
If we had her IQ tested, is it likely that the results could be helpful in figuring out whether additional acceleration would be a good choice? Or would it be just another piece of inconclusive information? I've been trying to do my online research, and I keep coming up with studies looking at kids with an IQ of 180, which are no help at all when my kid would be tested with an instrument with a ceiling of 160.
Argh. I'd go with "let her choose her own adventure," but she says things like "I can't take that GLL class for 3rd-5th graders, because I'm only supposed to be a 2nd grader." There's a secondary question - how do I convince her of how out-there her abilities actually are, and simultaneously convince her to keep her mouth shut about them around her classmates? (I went on a field trip with her earlier this month. OMG, she offered up unsolicited "I skipped 2nd grade" about 3 times during the day.)
