Fascinating insights, everyone. I am so glad I discovered this community! Let me try to address everyone's comments...
Grinity, I think your insight about the "bottleneck" is useful, and I am not sure I can say for certain what her perfectionism stems from. I tend to think it is innate; she is an extremely hard worker (not just in school but in life; she likes to be busy and purposeful). She is able to distinguish between effort and achievement and prizes effort more highly (her teacher gives grades on both and DD doesn't ever lament the achievement grade but gets upset if she doesn't receive the highest possible effort grade, since in her mind she has put 100% into it). No doubt we as parents have shaped and reinforced these values, but I have actively tried to discourage the perfectionism for years to no avail, so I do think it is inborn. She has never liked to make mistakes of any kind, no matter how much we frame them as "learning opportunities". She tends to be quite confident overall, so I don't think any of her work is frightening to her. She seems to always expect the best in terms of how she performs on her work (and her grades usually support it).
Kriston, I appreicate your take on the slower processing speed, particularly the analogy of a 13-14 yo working at the speed of an 8 yo. This is something I should keep in mind as I watch her work. I tend to agree that the psychologist might have jumped the gun on saying she should get an IEP that gives her extra time on tests and homework. She does seem to get rattled by speed and I do think that there is some extra step her brain goes through in translating the thoughts onto paper. Sometimes it goes correctly and sometimes it gets mixed up. I think concentration may be the differentiator and when she lets her guard down on "easy" things, the mistakes show. It makes me wonder if she is having to work much harder than anyone realizes to accomplish what she has, as her level of effort is notable in every aspect of her life. If there is something I can do to ease any extra effort and compensating she is doing, I want to catch it before she (presumably) moves into an accelerated GT program that ought to challenge her much more than she has been to date.
And Gratified3, given how strong her teacher recommendation will be, she *ought* to get into our GT program, but no one is a shoe-in. Even out of the kids who group-test above 130, only 2/3 get accepted. It is a fully immersive program in a highly regarded school district filled with talented kids and ambitious parents. The psychologist we used specilizes in advising parents on how to get kids into this program and she felt that it was not a lock.
Before the WISC testing, I felt strongly that the previous testing just didn't accurately reflect my child's abilities. I had done a few sample NNAT items with her and she seemed to get the ideas fine. She told me afterward that she erased a lot of her answers. I wonder if she talked herself out of correct answers or neither was right! It is fascinating to me that she only scored a 115 on the CogAT verbal given the VCI 155. The psychologist didn't seem to find this strange at all, saying they measure "totally different things". Clearly I think the 155 is much closer to her true ability, although we were surprised at how high it was. I think we allowed the school testing to downgrade our own expectations for and perhaps even impressions of her abilities, which is really scary. I see now that the group tests played to her weaknesses and the WISC played to her strengths. Is it really true that the highest score is the most accurate rather than the truth lying somewhere in between?
The DYS program sounds really great, and may well be worth the extra testing. I assume that having a bit of an uneven profile like my daughter doesn't hamper one's ability to be accepted into it, right?
Finally, a comment on our teacher, who I agree has really sharp observations. Unlike last year's teacher, who just loved my daughter so much that I felt like she automatically assumed everything she did was great (including when it wasn't), this teacher was slow to warm to my daughter. I was actually frustrated at our Oct conference because I didn't feel like she had clued into my daughter's strengths yet. It took me approaching her after the school testing in Jan to learn how much she really knew about my daughter and just hadn't said, and now I feel that she is a great advocate for her. I was hesitant to reach out but it was the best decision I have made, for what it's worth to anyone who might also feel unsure about whether to approach a teacher.
