Last year, my daughter took the highly capable assessment in her first grade and was admitted into the program. Unfortunately, we moved and her scores were insufficient for the gifted program in the new district. We applied to be tested again this year but our application was rejected due to the Math score on her last year's report card being lower than the benchmark (3.4 vs the required 3.5 out of 4).

So now my daughter can't even take the test just because of the report card. However, she scored a 99 in Math when she took the ITBS last year and the ITBS was supposed to be administered at one grade above her level. If that's the case, wouldn't her ITBS score already shown that she demonstrated mastery of the math skills?

I really want to appeal the district's decision. Is my understanding of ITBS correct?

Welcome!

It is difficult to directly compare her benchmark score with the ITBS, as the benchmark is likely a criterion-referenced measure specific to your district and it's implementation of the curriculum, while the ITBS is a norm-referenced instrument. A norm-referenced measure doesn't technically tell you the grade-level performance of a student. Rather, it indicates that this student received a score at or above that obtained by this percent of the standardization sample on the same item set--which likely is not fully representative of the curriculum standards. It's a sampling for determining ordinal placement (rank order in a population), not for determining actual performance in a curriculum of a certain grade level. Though we don't know for certain, it seems more likely that the report card score is aligned with mastery of the curriculum standards for a particular grade level (at least, hypothetically), since it's based on performance in response to instruction in the whole grade-level curriculum.

Do you have information on the appeal process in your district? That would be the place to start. Almost every system is required to have a written appeals process, even if they don't publicize it.