My 7-year-old DD was tested for the gifted cluster last year in second grade using the CogAt. There was a very large gap between her verbal score and the quantitative and non-verbal scores. It listed her as having an ability profile 7-E. I looked this up on the website and it indicates a child with a possible learning disability because of huge gaps between scores. I also noticed that she finished the verbal section (and hence got a score of 130) but the other two sections she didn't come close to finishing. On the quantitative section she only answered half the questions! There is no way to get a high score if you leave half of the test blank.
DD has ADHD-combined type and has a history of being very unfocused and slow in class. Plus, if she comes to a question she doesn't know she will fixate on it until she understands it. Other kids might come to a question they don't know and guess and move on quickly. That is not DD. She did not understand the CogAt is tightly timed and she only had about 30 sec. to answer each question. Even if she did understand that, she's not mature enough to manage her time that way.

DD did qualify for the gifted cluster based on her 130 verbal plus her high achievement score in math (98th percentile). But she is not high enough to qualify for GATE which starts next year in 4th grade (special school for highly gifted). She is going to have to be re-tested. I strongly oppose her taking the CogAT again and talked to the school psych about her ADHD and not finishing the test, and she said she would give her the Weschler non-verbal ability test. I looked this up and these are the subtests in the full battery:

Matrices
Object Assembly
Coding
Recognition
Spatial Span
Picture Arrangement

It looks like some of these tests are tests of processing speed and working memory, correct? I'm guessing that DD would not do well on these due to her ADHD? Plus kids can qualify for GATE based on getting a high score on any one of the 3 subtests on the CogAT (verbal, non-verbal, OR quantitative), and this test only tests non-verbal ability. What if DD's verbal ability (or quantitative) went up just a bit and she could qualify based on that, but she's not even being tested for it again? So other kids have 3 possible ways to qualify and DD will only have 1 (a high non-verbal score)?
Anyone have any suggestions as to how i should proceed with this and what the school psych wants to do? I don't know if she's just trying to be cheap, or save time, or ????
I asked her if DD could take the WISC IV and if she needs a full scale score and there are gaps because of processing speed/working memory, just compute the GAI, and she said "no, the WISC wouldn't be appropriate because there are timed sections." But it looks like that is the case with the Weschler non-verbal ability test as well! I don't get it!
If I get outside testing, how much would that cost and how do I find someone?