Thanks, Gratified3, for the advice on ACT/SAT. I haven't given those tests a moment's thought until now, and will look into them for next year. And I am also interested in the talent search online resources for planning based on Explore scores. I will check that out. Best of luck in getting your own scores
Math advocacy as a reason for testing has turned out to be a bit of a moot point for us, at least for the moment. To their credit, the school (garden variety public school) decided to go ahead with the middle school math screening for both our 4th grade kids this year, even though they normally do it in 5th grade. (And a friend of mine with a college degree in math had me all worked up last fall because she was having her 5th grade dd tutored in math to prepare for this screening. I guess I won't need to spend next year worrying about whether to get a math tutor!) That screening is scheduled for this week, so now I can shift my impatience to waiting for those results, now that the Explore results are in!
We did do Explore for a couple of reasons in addition to math advocacy. Ds does not handle time constraints well, and the Explore was good practice for him. I can just see him getting DQ'ed from the SAT as a high school senior because he refuses to put his pencil down when the time is up.... Also, we are thinking of pulling the kids out of school for a month or two next fall to travel - these scores relieve any guilt that they'll be missing anything critical.
And, for what it is worth, although their scores are strong, my kids are *old* 4th graders compared to many on this forum. Having never been skipped and with December birthdays, they were already 10yo when they took Explore. We have chosen not to push for skips this far - it is generally not done around here, although I think we could have convinced them. Our kids currently love pretty much everything about their school/class right now, so we don't want to rock the boat. Plus, student/teacher ratio will skyrocket when they hit middle school, making opportunities in the present setting better for differentiating instruction.