I already turned down the offer from the school to assess our child for acceleration.
Assessing for acceleration is not necessarily accelerating. The assessments which they would provide may help you learn a lot about your child, as well as learning about the educational system. Reading about the Iowa Acceleration Scale (
IAS) may shed some light on assessment for acceleration.
What is described as "immaturity" is not necessarily something a child may grow out of with time... if it is related to an underlying condition such as a learning disability, ADD/ADHD, ASD, etc. For those things, a child benefits the most the sooner there is a diagnosis and efforts can be made toward remediation and accommodation.
Most of what I've read about acceleration seems to suggest that it is bad for kids...
Actually the opposite is true. These resources may be of interest...
-
Acceleration Institute-
roundup of discussion threads on acceleration
... especially for those who are having a lot of problems connecting with peers socially.
This may depend upon the reason(s) for the lack of connection with peers.
- Some children excel when placed among older peers who may have similar interests and knowledge base.
- Some children need direct teaching of social skills.
child's probable ADHD diagnosis
You may want to explore this, and have a formal diagnosis if it applies.
Our main reason for achievement testing--now it may sound silly, but it would be to support our application for the Davidson Young Scholars Program
This is a perfectly wonderful reason to test... not silly at all. However it would not necessarily have to be an achievement test. For example: since he took the WPPSI previously, he could take a WISC now.
