greenlotus, I don't have a student at your school, so have no idea if this is a possibility, but was just wondering. Is it possible your dd is being challenged to think deeply in class, but doesn't have to spend copious amounts of time on homework and gets great grades partly because the teachers give out great grades unless a student is really not performing well? I only ask that because our experience with school so far has been that As are much easier to obtain than when I was in school - not because the classes are always easy but because teachers seem to prefer to give out good grades unless they have a compelling reason not to.
As long as my child felt like they were receiving and participating in intellectually stimulating discussions during class, I wouldn't worry about the other. If your dd is complaining about boredom during class, I'd look into requesting subject acceleration or look for a different learning environment altogether.
Is it really true that state assessments are the only standardized testing the kids do in your area in middle school? In our area the students take state tests + TerraNova, which has national norms and is used as one of the criteria in gifted placement. I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for in testing but it sounds like you are looking for info that shows your dd needs to be accelerated; one other avenue is to request end-of-year testing at the next grade level. Our high school offers credit-through-testing, so students can test out of various subjects if they can achieve a certain percentage on the test.
Best wishes,
polarbear
