Every time I try to put my square-peg DD12 into the round-hole public school, we end up with a new round of testing to prove that there's something wrong with her. When she leaves, the need for diagnosis magically disappears.
ljoy, I think most of us with high ability children, children who have no challenges as well as children who have some type of challenge, find that fitting our kids into public school is far from ideal and often quite difficult. Public school is, by necessity, designed to educate a large number of individual children to an average goal with limited $. Very few kids actually find an ideal "fit" in a public (or private) school, and most parents have to settle for less than ideal with any brick-and-mortar school. That has *nothing* to do with whether or not a child has a disability, which is a much different thing than trying to find the appropriate educational environment that meets a child where they are intellectually and allows for maximum intellectual growth.
The ironic thing about public schools and children with disabilities is - they are *often* the best place to be because they are required by law to provide appropriate accommodations and instruction to children with disabilities.
I probably haven't explained this well, but as a parent of two children who are both intellectually gifted and also have disabilities, it's simply not the same thing as saying "my child doesn't fit here therefore I should test for a disability". My kids' issues extend outside the classroom, outside any classroom, and they don't go away just by finding them a gifted classroom or better overall intellectually challenging classroom.
Hope that makes sense!
polarbear
