Welcome to the forum. We had issues with getting our ds id'd as gifted through our school district - and were ultimately successful. Our situation is a bit different - our ds is 2e - but here are a few thoughts based on our process that might be useful to consider:
* Our ds scored significantly lower on his CogAT than he had scored previously on the WISC. Over time, (due to his 2e primarily), he was also assessed using the WJ-III Cognitive Abilities test and another round of the WISC - his ability scores on those tests have been very consistent - it's the CogAT that doesn't "line up".
* The CogAT is a "learned ability" test rather than an "innate ability" test such as the WISC. This means that to a certain extent, a child's background exposure to different types of information could potentially impact their score.
* It sounds like your district considers multiple factors when making decisions about gifted program entry, but there might be a bit more info that's out there that might be useful when advocating. For instance, do you have any idea what the cut-off percentile is on the CogAT? If you were to find out, for instance, that it's either lower than or around the same area as your dd's WISC percentile, you could consider advocating from the standpoint of having strong scores as support. If you were to find out the percentage cut-off is significantly higher (for instance, 98 or 99th percentile), then you'll have a more difficult time advocating with the WISC score you have (although it sounds like you have achievement scores that are close).
* If you choose to advocate further, get as much info as you can, and then put a request in writing.
* Since he's already on the waiting list, I'd guess that there's possibly not much that further advocacy can accomplish at this point (but I could be wrong!)
The tests showed no learning disabilities or language disorders.
A few other thoughts - did you see a breakdown of subtest scores on the WISC and WIAT testing? If so, were there any large discrepancies? (large gaps can sometimes exist between subtest scores, indicating a challenge, yet average out so that you'd never guess they existed when you're only seeing the averaged test scores). Does his academic work reflect the scores you see on the WISC and WIAT? Has he always been anxious or has his anxiety only been present since he's been in school? You mentioned that he's physically awkward - is he unusually physically awkward or just typically physically awkward? (i.e., did he meet most of his motor-related milestones at the age you'd expect, or was he somewhat behind age-wise in attaining some of them?)
ADHD may be an issue; however, until he can be challenged more at school we don't know.
While it's true that if his entire challenge is due to being under-challenged in the classroom, and if you were able to provide him with the appropriate level of challenge at school, what appear to be ADHD symptoms might totally disappear... I don't think it's necessarily true that you can't determine if ADHD is an issue when a child is under-challenged in school. You can rule ADHD out by a thorough ADHD assessment... but I don't think you have to wait for that perfect academic environment to know that a child has an ADHD diagnosis (if they actually do). I realize I'm not explaining this very well! For instance, there are a lot of symptoms of ADHD that also occur for other reasons, including potentially being in an inappropriate school environment.. therefore you can't determine that because symptom "A" exists, a child definitively has ADHD. On the other hand, there are a number of widely accepted screeners for ADHD that can be used to determine the potential for ADHD, regardless of where the child is placed in school or the level of frustration due to that placement. One of the criteria for ADHD is that the behaviors must be observed in more than one setting... so I'd consider - do you see ADHD-like behaviors at home? Or have their been concerns about ADHD expressed by either a teacher or an adult who is involved with your child in a different setting? If no to all three of those, I'd not worry one whit about ADHD... but otoh, if there have been concerns.. then I'd still consider it a possibility worth checking into. There are checklists you can find for tweens and teens that they can fill out themselves that can give you insight into whether or not they have concerns which might be related to ADHD. TOTALLY not the same thing as seeing a professional, but they can be helpful for you as a parent to try to understand what's going on with your ds.
Another thing you can do with an 11-year old is keep a journal of when anxiety peaks etc - and over time you and he might see some patterns that would help you understand what's going on.
He is not high achieving and only motivated by the things he is interested, such as math, building stuff, writing comics.
This again, is only a remote possibility and not necessarily at all likely, but if you have any other suspicions of an LD etc - this is sometimes what you'll see in a highly gifted child - it can look like a child who's only interested in things he's really motivated by, when what's really happening is he can't keep up or perform above average etc on areas he's challenged, but no one notices the difference other than attributing it to interest or lack of interest.
Hope that makes sense!
polarbear
