I do disagree that the MAP testing is a bald attempt to undo the testing data. I think it's more likely to translate unfamiliar language (IQ-speak) into familiar 'we can work with that' language.
For example, if they are going to skip him, wouldn't it be nice to skip him into a classroom that had many kids similar to your son in MAP test scores? Maybe they would look at the MAP testing and decide that a single skip wasn't enough and to suggest a skip of two or three grades - whatever it takes to get some readiness level peers near by.
Well, that does seem far fetched, but, it's possible!
Love and More Love,
Grinity
Thank you! Anything's possible. Today went very well. We met with the school psychologist about the MAP, and the kindergarten teacher as a pre-meeting for Friday's TAT meeting. I really continue to like both of them, and today almost wanted to hug them. The school psychologist was very kind, and volunteered up-front that the MAP was simply to make it easier to make proper recommendations for acceleration of some type, which was likely to be her recommendation, as our son was obviously more highly gifted than they'd realized before. She also made it sound like even if our son bombed the MAP for some reason, it wouldn't be a deal-killer at all.
The kindergarten teacher was
incredibly nice. She started out unable to speak for a moment, with tears in her eyes, and said that after reading our tester's report she finally understood our son. She seemed quite upset at the possibility that she had contributed to any unhappiness for him this year. I told her I thought that given all of the difficulties of teaching our son, and the information she had to work with, I couldn't fault anything she'd said or done; that in retrospect I thought this first year in the school system had gone pretty well, keeping in mind that the kindergarten year is not all about academics anyway; and that I am very thankful for all the extra time she'd spent on him.
I feel a lot better.
