Our experience in elementary school (and really continuing on beyond) is that achievement testing carried more weight when advocating, particularly if it was something that could be directly tied to curriculum benchmarks used in the school district.

Three things that were difficult for us to advocate through in early elementary:

1) General attitude of not putting much into the meaning of IQ scores for young children in particular, and for all children in general. None of our ds' teachers have ever really given a whit about his IQ scores (outside of his gifted program teachers). It's what teachers see in the classroom (motivation, attitude, classroom work) that has made the bigger difference in their perception of whether or not a child is gifted or "needs more".

2) A general belief that IQ test scores weren't really reliable until around age 8 (hence the reason that I think many school districts don't start gifted programs or screen for giftedness until 3rd grade). On the one hand, I think there's most likely a large portion of truth in that statement of unreliability - for kids who might score lower than their true ability due to distractions, going slow, not understanding the importance of testing, just feeling goofy that day, whatever. But the *perception* among school staff was that it works both ways - early high scores might not hold up over time.

3) There were (in our school) a *ton* of parents who were all clamoring for "something more" for their kids in early elementary school. A huge chunk of the parents I knew in K-1 who were convinced their children were gifted and needed that "more" disappeared into the ether by 2nd or 3rd grade - there kids were still in school, but the parents were no longer beating down the principal's door demanding gifted services. I suspect that meant there were typically a lot of parents thinking their children were exceptionally gifted who really weren't - and because of that groundswell of parents thinking their kids were gifted early on - it made it difficult for *all* parents advocating for their children to be heard.

In your situation, you've already experienced an unwillingness to respond to your requests for more challenge - given that resistance, I'd think that the likelihood of getting help with IQ scores but not achievement scores would also most likely be an uphill battle.

OTOH, if your ds is unhappy and you go forward with advocating for change this year, it should be relatively easy to get achievement testing along with IQ testing if you look for private testing. You can also consider requesting testing in writing through your school district - you'll need to look up what the official policy is, but where we are the policy states that any parent can request gifted testing - you just have to turn the request in to the gifted department in writing (email works a-ok).

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - just another thought I'll throw out there - be prepared that IQ testing might not yield the results you are expecting. That doesn't mean your child isn't bright and doesn't need that "something more". For many kids, testing is straightforward, but not for all.