Two years ago in 4th grade (perhaps the bar is lower for 4th compared to the 6th grade criteria you reference?), my then just turned 10yo dd took the Explore cold. I forget the composite score, but it earned her a bronze medal from NUMATS (tied for 3rd place for her grade level), and was at the 99th %ile based on the 8th grade norms.
What do you think accounted for such a high score, especially in math? Was the math she did at school and home truly at a 4th grade level and was she able to make that jump even though she had never seen some of the math before? Was she reading at a much higher level at school and home? Were you surprised that she scored so highly?
As you might expect, her experience has been spotty. Her elementary school was on two campuses (K-2 and 3-5) with very different principals. She had excellent in-class acceleration in math in 2nd grade, but learned almost no new math in 3rd. Her 4th grade teacher was opposed to acceleration but introduced off-curriculum math topics. (As a current 6th grader, she is in Honors Algebra.)
For reading, she has been an insatiable reader since age 2 - she goes through books in quantity. I'm pretty sure she learned virtually nothing in school related to reading until around 4th grade.
The most surprising part of the Explore for us was the Science. I expected this to be her weakest area due to not having the exposure in school. She aced that one, though, and as far as we can tell from what our kids reported, it actually required minimal content knowledge. Rather, it tested reading and logic skills. The test provided short texts with data, graphs and other info., and asked the kids to draw conclusions (without bringing in prior knowledge about the topic).
