But you really are better off having an outside person be the one to tell her. It's always better to have the info coming from a person with a higher educational 'rank' instead of from a lowely parent. If the test was done privately, then the tester is the obvious choice. If the test was done through the school, perhaps the State gifted association could recommend a local psychologist who could look at the results from the school's test and make recommendation. Actually, I think that you could ask your Family Consultant if she/he is willing to call the school psychologist and 'gave a little chat.'
I snipped out some of the middle so I could address this part. The testing was done privately by a tester who does all the testing for GATE for a neighboring school district. She's an ed.psych and wrote a lengthy report for our school psychologist to review. I think that at the time, the school psych hadn't seen the MAP scores- just the WISC and SB-V she was able to be dismissive. She can't really take that approach now- at least not in any logical way! Our family consultant is more than willing to talk to the school and has had some luck with the VP, who will be at the meeting. But progress beyond that and into the classroom has been nonexistent.
But back to my role as calm, thoughtful helper: What happens when you ask the school how are they planning to measure what one year of academic growth would be for your child? That is the real question.
This is actually the whole goal of this meeting, at least in my head! Here the school has said they want one year of growth. So how will they measure that? And how do they plan to teach him to actually make that happen? His reading score on his MAP testing hasn't moved since last spring... because he's not getting any instruction. Sure they have reading group at school and he's actually reading stuff somewhat close to his lexile level. But the instruction is nowhere near that. According to the NWEA stuff, he should be discussing figurative language, logic and persuasive arguments, inferences and metaphors etc. His reading instruction consists entirely of "summarize this chapter" and "who is the main character?"
