If you were considering acceleration and already had outside testing done, would you bother to have your second grader, in a school that doesn't do gifted evaluations until third grade, take the standardized Iowa Assessments (previously ITBS) and CogAT along with the third graders, a year early?

The tests would be a year above grade level, and as such, they would be normed against third graders, is that correct? So her scores would be lower than if she were in the actual grade, I presume. If she does actually skip the grade later this year, I would think she'd need to take the tests regardless.

How do you account for reaching the testing minimums for gifted programs if it's normed against those a year above? Especially since the CogAT form itself is a different format at third grade level than second grade. And can she take the CogAT again one year later, if she didn't end up skipping second grade, or is there a longer retest spacing required?