I've got a smart and maybe/maybe not gifted 7 year old who was devastated to not make the cut-off for her school's gate program, which she wanted to be in like her older HG sister. The main part of the entrance rubric is the OLSAT. She missed the qualifying score by 3 points-- she needed one standard deviation for her grade, where 559 is average, 592 is 1SD, and 625 is 2SD.

I need to decide whether or not to ask her to be retested, and one of the things that will influence my decision is "how much" she missed the cut-off by. My instinct is that 3 points is pretty close and could have been a bad day, but I'm not sure because I don't know much about the test. Does anyone who knows more about this test have an opinion? (And no, I don't have a score report for her.)

Both my kids did not pass the OLSAT, not even closely, but both are HG.

The OLSAT is a gifted and high ability screener, but does not identify all gifted kids. Our school has several ways to be identified for the gifted program, is the OLSAT the only way she can be identified?

Well, so there's this:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/082957359601100215

which finds that, in her small study population, the OLSAT underidentified GT students at the 98, 97, and 96th %ile cutoffs (using a comprehensive WISC measure as the standard of comparison). Correlation of .39 at the 98th %ile or higher between the two measures, which isn't all that great.

And also, the SEM of the OLSAT-8 is just under 6, which means that your DC's score is within a SEM of the cutoff score. (That's on the SAI, btw, not the scaled score, so actually the relevant SEM is likely even larger in this case.) So there's that.

I would start, however, by considering whether the GATE program provides sufficient support to be worth the advocacy.

Sadly, yes.

My HG daughter didn't score nearly as well on the OLSAT as on other tests, so I totally get you on the limitations of the test.

The GATE program does not provide sufficient support, and that's a good point. The way GATE has functioned for my eldest has been as a steam-release valve that gets her out of the classroom and into a somewhat engaging situation with kids on her level. It's a band-aid for sure, but it's something she looks forward to.

So you need the cohort. All I can say is I would appeal, what have you got to lose?

Will they accept an actual IQ test result? If so, I would go private and do that instead.

We decided to have her re-tested in September.

Nope, they don't.