I have to agree about the early testing. I folded under pressure from the school and agreed not to test my oldest child this year (age 6, 1st grade). The school doesn't want to test until 2nd grade, and despite a lot of "reasons" that were offered, my cynical take is that the real reason for delayed testing is the lack of services until 3rd grade. Parents with concrete information are more likely to push for services that don't exist.

My husband really wanted to test, but when I explained the list of reasons for delay, he reluctantly agreed. I now regret our decision.

Part of what has changed my mind about testing is the time I've spent volunteering in class. The difference between what my son does in class and at home was eye opening. I've always known my kids are smarter than average, but I didn't really have any idea what a typical 6 or year old could do until I started helping at school. My son's teacher is a warm, kind person who really makes an effort to engage him, but he is tuning out, and I now understand why. They practice reading the "ow" sound and make lists of ow words. He comes home and reads Chemicals in Action, which is targeted at 7th or 8th graders. They talk about the fact that animals have different types of homes. My 6 year old comes home and freezes water, milk, rum, and rubbing alcohol with different combinations of salt and sugar to find out which liquids will freeze and whether or not the salt and sugar will change the way they freeze. (Yesterday's experiment.)

I'm not sure testing would make a huge difference because of the lack of services for the early grades, but numbers mean something in a bureaucracy, and my son might have at least gotten a little more differential instruction.

I'm spending this afternoon writing an essay about why my son should be in the one second grade class that has a teacher with gifted training. If I had tested him, this would not be an issue now. Due to school policies about requesting instructors, I can't ask for a specific teacher. Instead, I am left with documenting behaviors that support my request for a gifted/TAG-trained teacher without requesting her by name. Fortunately for my son, his current teacher thinks needs to be there too, so she is providing supporting documentation.

At this point, I plan to test my second child (now 4) in kindergarten.