Thanks very much for your insights. I think she very definitely has a verbal preference, although I do wonder, too, how much that has to do with what she's been exposed to. She's been very quick with math and related areas - piano, chess - since she was quite young but has not received much in the way of enrichment / speeding up in any formal math instruction, for instance.
Thanks, also, for your insights on whether to seek out more testing. The pysch that performed the testing has a good deal of exprience working with gifted kids, so there's no reason to think his assessment is inaccurate. He did give some recommendations for DD's instruction - that she be allowed to move ahead at her own pace, and to be placed for some core academic subjects with kids in 4th or even 5th grade (she's a 3rd grader). As he is not in-district, his recommendations didn't get any more specific than that.
We have met with DD's principal and classroom teacher, and they are willing to have her walk to 4th or even 5th grade math classes, but the trouble is in the scheduling - doing that might mean her missing recess and lunch with her friends, or PE/Art/Music. Frankly, those are the only things she really likes about school and I don't much like the thought of her missing those things. What she really needs, I think, is to be with her age-level AND intellectual peers. Which is simply not going to happen in our local school district.
But you're right; that doesn't necessarily mean that it will improve elsewhere, even in a full-blooded GT program. I'm reluctant to uproot; however I also I need to what's best for DD, and surely any sort of GT program would be better than nothing and the years of boredom she faces if we stay where we are?
(I can see why folks homeschool; but this is not an option for us.)
