This is going to sound like a stupid question

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DW_a_Mom, Don't hold me to this, but I think the way some school districts measure under and over performance is through the Stamford/Otis Lennon testing. If the achievement part of the test is very low in comparison to what the IQ testing predicts, then that indicates the child is not working to full potential. There may also be tests better geared for kids who are statistical outliers but that is where they will start.

I don't have much time to post as I am going to have to "pull an all nighter" to finish a work assignment for tomorrow, but I just wanted to thank you guys from the bottom of my heart.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this trying to figure out what to do. So far, I have been blown away with how this school district has handled both of my kids. I have decided that as soon as I get my "official diagnosis" from one of the doctors the district is used to (I am not anticipating any difficulty with this. Someone would need to be dead not to notice the problems), I am going to have them do a full assessment. They said they would do the same assessment for 504 as they would for an IEP. Then I will see what they recommend.

At this point, he neither has an IEP nor 504 accommodations. He is in an RTI program ( http://www.nasponline.org/resources/han ... primer.pdf for those unfamiliar) right now and his teachers are pretty on top of things. We meet regularly or at least communicate via email and they have implemented any suggestions I have given them to help him succeed. He also gets help from the "extra teacher" in the class.

I want to "assume" that they will continue to give him the support he needs, regardless of what letters or numbers are attached to his name. The 6th and 7th grades are in the same school, and the teachers already said they would work with next years' teachers to help and he will keep the same guidance counselor and psychologist until he goes to 9th grade.

On the other hand, one thing that they said yesterday that I think I am only understanding what they meant today is that they cautioned me about "hidden services" and that it could put him at a "huge disadvantage" in the future. It totally dawned on me today. He IS getting hidden services right now. They are treating him as if he is classified when he is not. But if we had to go up against the CSE, the first thing they are going to look at is his grades. Which look fine. There will be no paper trail of everything the teachers and I have done to get him here. And, like any other bureaucracy, all they are going to care about is paper. And there is none. I'm now starting to wonder if the whole "bigger purpose" of the meeting was to help me see that we can't just continue this way, that we have to get things formalized before he establishes some kind of track record of "success." Maybe they are used to dealing with parents who get offending if you just very bluntly say "Your child needs help."

But here is an example of what I am dealing with, with an 11 year old. I told him to log on to his math site and do his math homework. His computer is downstairs. I am upstairs. He just came up to ask me if he could please have a BM before he finished his math homework. Really? Wouldn't "regular" 11 year old recognize that you can stop to crap in the middle of homework? Another example: he didn't go to see his guidance counselor today and when I asked him why, he said his pass fell out of his pocket, so he didn't have it in the period he was supposed to go. It did NOT occur to him to let the teacher know that he got a pass but lost it. He just knows that you can't go to the guidance office without a pass. So he sat there in silence in the class. To be honest, I am clueless regarding how you even teach stuff like this <sigh>

(so goes for my short post! LOL)