I think I'm also a little mad at the school for not seeing it sooner. The K teacher said it would be fine and she would outgrow, but 1st and 2nd were always complaining about her behavior.
The school personnel are only qualified to identify educational issues, not make a medical diagnosis. If she's high-achieving, you can at least be somewhat relieved that she's learning in spite of the attention issues. Often kids who are gifted get identified later because "they're so bright, how could they possibly have a learning disability?"
Even now, they have implemented a behavior plan, but if it's ADHD, it might not be possible for her to meet those goals without medication, right? It wasn't the school saying we should get her tested, it's me trying to rule things out that have brought us to this point.
It might or might not be possible to give her some strategies to improve things. My bet is that if she has ADHD, meds would help her get there with less struggle.
And is ADHD a qualifier for an IEP? I'm not against that, I DO think Butter needs individualized attention...but I'm also worried about if people (adults actually) will treat her differently if they know...and what if the medication works and it turns out she's even more gifted (she scored at the top cutoff between our District's gifted/pg) and the school still can't meet her needs?
The school would have to do a thorough educational evaluation (see the book From Emotions to Advocacy about requesting one). Then they'd decide to what extent her ADHD is affecting her education. If it's deemed significant she will get an IEP. If not, maybe not.
Everybody notices the kids with extra needs, whether there is an IEP or not. As you said, peers notice, teachers notice. It's not like she's off the radar now, so I find it unlikely that the label would make anything worse for her.
DeeDee
