Amy, this is your son with autism?
Some thoughts:
--It is IMO totally bizarre that they are taking the WISC and last year's CogAT as "qualitative." These are quantitative, scored assessments. Like MON, I'd be looking to discuss an appeal process with whomever decides this.
--The Renzulli criteria (irritatingly) presume that gifted people all present in similar ways. They are biased toward extroverts and people with soft skills that a person with autism is unlikely to have at this age. These criteria ignore or marginalize lots of "other" kinds of giftedness. I'm not saying you should necessarily fight them on their choice of measures, but I'm saying that you shouldn't let their use of this scale affect your perception of what's going on.
--Our neuropsych reports that with remediation of autism over time, IQ scores tend to both rise and become more coherent. That is, your DS may later be better able to answer questions on some standardized tests and get into the program without a fuss, if there are later entry points.
--For our DS, participation in gifted placement was really foundational to behavior success at school. He behaved better when he was placed in a more interesting setting. I don't remember right now whether this is an issue for your DS; but for mine, the autism helped demonstrate the need for academic acceleration by making all other options unthinkable.
HTH,
DeeDee
