Thanks for the thoughts. More to mull over...
In response to your questions, the district uses a combination of the Iowa Basic Skills Test and CogAT tests to determine eligibility.
Roughly, the top 2.8% of the testers qualify for participation in the gifted program. Of that 2.8%, only the top half (approximately) can participate in the full-time program.
In theory, the families are supposed to be able to choose whether to go full-time or stay in pull-out. But there are more families who want to do full-time than there is space, so they let kids in according to test scores (top scorers get in first).
The coordinator told me that DD's scores make her look like a good candidate for the full-time program, but she was not 99th percentile in everything. I am guessing she is at the lower end of the top 1.4%, considering how she compares to the national numbers on the test results.
I do not know if I want to seek out additional testing to establish just how gifted she is. Both of her parents were identified as gifted and I don't think she was mis-identified. I suppose I could be underestimating her ability, but her group test scores were not way off the mark of what I would have predicted for her. I dunno.
