ok, also, yes, he does have an IEP. i'm not sure the teacher has even read it. it is time for a new one... i will ask about having him tested. but since he is just turning 6, i do not believe they will do it. i cannot afford the testing. i also do not believe the teacher will sign the needed form for my son, needed to apply to eChoices- lausd's magnet program. because he is too young to be tested, he must meet 4 levels of criteria in area of critical thinking... this past june, the asst principal and his teacher both believed he met the 4criteria easily. and he proved it by testing into the highly sought after magnet school------ his current school is NOT a magnet. and the SAS program is in no way for "gifted" kids.
if the teacher refuses to sign, we are stuck.
CCN, I'm not in LA, so I'm not familiar with your school district choices - but I was curious about the programs, so I took a quick look at the magnet website for LA. It looks like there is an option of "OR" if you don't have teacher sign-off on all 4 areas as required - rather than the teacher sign-off a student can qualify through achieving greater than 85th percentile on a standardized test score. I'm guessing your ds is too young to have been through CA state testing yet (?) but you might have two other options available for achievement testing: 1) through the school district - if your ds goes through the IEP process this would be part of the standard testing (at least it is in most school districts)... and 2) if you can afford to pay for it, you can most likely find someone privately to administer a nationally-recognized and normed standardized test which you could request the school accept.
One thing that is interesting to me though is the 85th percentile on an achievement test cut-off, and then no other options until the Highly Gifted 99.9th percentile on an IQ test for the HG schools. That's a *huge* difference in student populations, and I suspect a lot of kids who would test as MG or HG (but not 99.9th percentile HG) are going to be bored in a magnet school which has an 85th percentile cutoff... unless there is true differentiation going on.
polarbear
