Public school psychologists are notorious for not understanding gifted kids, particularly 2E ones. My son's first round of testing was done at the public school and their conclusion was that he was on the low side of average and "just slow."
The same thing would have happened to us if we hadn't had our private eval first, and if I didn't know (through that eval) that it was important to look at discrepancies and variation in subtest scores. The school eval process was very formulaic - everything was put into specifically formatted forms, and the scores that were reported in those forms were the averaged totals, not the subtests. We had to specifically bring up the subtest variation, had to request a copy of the full set of subtest scores, and had to specifically request that the low subtest scores that are indicative of our ds' challenges be included in his eligibility report. We also had to specifically request certain tests which illustrate and define his disability - the school district routinely *gives* those tests, and is very familiar with them - but we had to know to ask for them, the school staff wasn't going to offer them up unless we requested them.
None of the professionals we saw either at school or outside of school have been experts in gifted students, let alone 2e children - we simply don't have an "expert" in our geographical area or anyone who specializes in gifted/2e. However, the private professional considered the gifted side of our ds as well as the challenges in making recommendations, and the school psych did not. In fact, it's my guess that the school psych had never seen a kid with a high IQ before because school psychs are typically seeing kids who are challenged with lower ability. Not only did this make it less likely that he/she would understand a 2e challenge, it also meant that we had to spend a lot of times as parents explaining 2e to the school staff etc in meetings, and we had to pre-empt a lot of eye-rolling on the part of the staff when scores were read at meetings etc. (eta - having that private eval that specifically stated a diagnosis was *really* helpful in advocating through this belief that everything was "fine" because ds had a higher-than-typical IQ than the school staff was used to seeing at IEP eligibility meetings.)
polarbear
