According to the Iowa Acceleration book, formal testings are necessary or highly recommended. Has anyone skipped a grade without the formal IQ/achievement test? I called around and realized that the price for these tests are not cheap....
You really shouldn't. There is a good reason the IQ scores are a required piece on the IAS. We did have those for dd#1, who skipped 5th a year and a half ago, but our district does skip kids without it. The results of those skips are much more random. One of dd's acquaintances would be one of those kids and, from what I've heard, it isn't working too well socially or academically. For some of the others kids without the IQ testing, it has worked well but they probably do have the scores, they just haven't been tested to verify it.
We did agree to the skip prior to getting back the above level achievement test scores for dd b/c she was still an excellent candidate with a bunch of zeros in that area, but they did support it when the scores came in.
Our school's GT coordinator did mention that they might be able to do some of the testing w/in the district for kids who didn't have the testing yet. Might your district be able to have a school psychologist with a PhD administer an IQ test? Grade level achievement tests are not too expensive, so that piece you should be able to get from the school b/c they do those all the time already (MAPs, ITBS, etc.).
