I'm curious about why some of the previous posters are wary of school psychologists. Why should I trust their diagnosis less than I should trust those of private professionals? I just want the school to be able to accommodate her needs and help her with her challenges.
One - the school psychologist works for the SCHOOL. Not for you or your child. While they likely have good intentions, they are ultimately working for their employer.
Two - Experience. You can read countless stories on this board, but the long story short is that the vast majority of the time school psychologists are dealing with kids from bad home with behavior problems, not highly gifted children with possible learning disorders. Many of the kids on this board have IQ ranges that make them, statistically speaking, one in a thousand, one in 5,000. It's highly unlikely there's a single other child in their school like them. How likely is it a school psychologist has seen enough kids like these to understand them?
Three - In my experience, they are overworked and underpaid. They don't have the time or resources to do the sort of testing that really should be used (in our case they used the K-TEA and K-ABC as opposed to the private neuropsych who was able to use the WISC and WIAT among other surveys/observations.) The private doctors will typically work with/observe your child for 3-4hours or longer. The school psych will probably get an hour, tops, and often that's in a random school room with kids passing in the hallways, bells ringing and countless other distractions.
In addition, many school psychologists are simply not capable of doing the diagnostic work necessary to actually diagnose 2e children. They have a limited number of 'bubbles' they can fill in, and that's it. My DS's last school psychologist wanted to label him 'emotionally disturbed' which would have likely landed him in a special isolated classroom full of other 'emotionally disturbed' children - a fine place for a highly gifted kid on the autism spectrum!
This is not to say all school psychologists are terrible. I'm sure there are some amazing ones out there! But likely won't have any idea what your school psychologist is like until way too late to do anything about it. You can't read up online about them or find patient reviews. You can't sit down and interview them prior to them testing your child. You don't get a personal follow-up with recommendations next steps. You get a short ARD meeting with a couple page report with a label or not.
