But, I'm not sure what the district even offers for TAG.
That's totally an issue - why work hard if all they offer is a 90 minute pull out once a week that she'll find boring unless she just happens to be exactly at the most common local level of giftedness.
She wants to skip a grade,
Depending on how well the medication handles her ADHD, this can be a tricky proposition. At the elementary school level it may be exactly what she needs, as the ADHD will make it even more important for her to be in a challenging environment, we found that later (High School) where organizational skills had a big impact on grades, (which suddenly counted!) we had to decel back to agemates, but for us this was the 'least worst' path. No Regrets here!
and I'm interested in having a solid idea of her abilities and achievement levels.
Jenny
Wouldn't this be nice?
This is almost impossible.
One approach is to look for a place where she can take NWEA's MAP testing. This is an amazing test because it is given on computer and every right answer means that the next question will be harder, and every wrong question means that the next question will be easier...mind blowing, right? So a test like this can really really pinpoint exactly where a child is at. Your dd might be college level at reading and Kindy level at spelling, and a test like MAP will lay it all out.
If that isn't available, try to get ahold of 'scope and sequence' for your local school from their website, or tests that are given to 3rd and 4th graders locally, and show that she knows x,y, and z that they well planning to 'teach' in 3rd grade, and even knows 70% of what they were planning to teach in 4th grade. Then you really know what her achievement is compared to local standards.
Then there are things called achievement tests, there are state level tests. These help a little, but with ADHD, lots of kids make careless errors that hide what they actually know. I remember telling my son's teacher. Yes, he makes mistakes in Math and doesn't check his work so he isn't the top scoring kid. He would make the same % of mistakes 2 years below grade level and 2 years above grade level. Yes I agree that he should learn to check his work. Help him learn to check his work by giving him work that is challenging to him. Given his current work, I'm delighted he does it once, let alone check it.
So that was snarkier than it needed to be, I should have said it better, but my body language was excellent, I was almost in tears, and I think I got away with it. Not that he got harder work, but the teacher stopped using the mistakes as an excuse. She just moved into 'this is what we have for 8 year olds at this school.'
((sigh))
I'm hoping that with the label of ADHD you'll have more luck explaining that your child really really needs challenge. But don't all kids deserve that?
Grinity
