This is absolutely the case at my daughter's charter school. The entrance requirements are already pretty high, FSIQ 130+ to even be considered for the lottery. They have a sibling policy, but the sib has to also have minimum scores to get a spot.
My DS is 2E . His processing speed was so low that he missed the FSIQ. His GAI was much higher than the minimum, and he had previously diagnosed LDs that would clearly effect the low subtests, but they still refused to consider him. The tester, a 2E specialist, said she thought he was HG and an intelligent reading of the subtests supported that. But according to this school, if you have fine motor problems so severe that you can barely hold a pencil and as a result, you can't make marks in boxes at a high rate of speed, then you are not gifted enough for their precious program, Sigh.
They did eventually reconsider and offered him a spot, but with the same hemming and hawing that I am hearing from others in this thread..... Well we don't offer OT..... He might not be a good fit for our program, he might struggle..... and my personal favorite, Don't you think you should leave the spot for a child who could really benefit from our program? A person well know on the internet for writing about giftedness (but has zero experience with 2E as best I can figure) is on their BOD and called me at one point. Told me I should just homeschool DS. I am thinking, but I don't WANT to homeschool. I want to send my gifted son to the same school his gifted older sister attends, but I can't because, first, you would not let me and then second, you scared me into thinking the experience would scar the child for life.
So after homeschooling for a year, I sent DS to ANOTHER charter school. This one seems to specialize in quirky kids. When I stopped by to tour the school, I was basically told, yes, quirky is what we do. Bring it on! And they have done a great job. He has an IEP for OT and gets a little bit of one on one tutoring for fluency issues. They use MAP scores for academic placement so he has a two year grade skip for math, close to that for reading and does spelling with the kids a year younger (well not anymore, he is at grade level now. But that is where he started the year.). His achievement scores were all stellar this year, comparable to his sister's, and exactly what you would expect from an HG kid.
So just in my personal experience, I have found radically different attitudes toward LDs from the two charters my family has been involved with. With my daughter's school, they just don't want to bother with 2E kids. Test scores are not even an issue because of the IQ requirement. But they have extensive enrichment programming and my sense is that they want to keep the focus and the money there. The waiting list is long, so they are never hurting for students. So why bother with serving 2E or high poverty students, for that matter? Other than the fact that it is probably not legal, but whatever....
My son's school welcomes all children and attempts to meet them where they are. I think it is hilarious that the school with the mediocre tests scores and no official gifted program is actually better at ability grouping than the school that is supposed to focus on kids with unique and intense learning needs, but that is probably discussion for another thread.
