I'm not sure what he thinks a "label" like that would do to harm his son's life. Let's entertain his reasoning for a second, to kind of follow it to its logical conclusion: according to him, your son is "normal" and the school assessing him has the threat of mislabeling him as higher spectrum Autistic. Now, either the normal will show through sooner or later, or it'll be one of those labels that doesn't ever really affect his life except by helping him identify bigoted people(his son goes in for an interview for a job and they talk to him and get to know him but they see on his application that he has Autism and it is explained that he is higher functioning; either they're going to be assholes and assume there will be future problems, which, you don't want your son to work for reactionary butt nuggets like that anyway, or they're going to be like 'he acts normal and he says he's higher functioning; no big deal.'). It's not a death sentence especially if, through this assessment, he gets extra help in his classes, someone sitting with him, guiding him, validating him and teaching him tools on how to deal with this situation by situation, right? Everybdoy could use a little early guidance in understanding their emotions, what they're feeling, how to articulate it, how to deal with it; Hell, it took me 26 years to get my foot in that door and that was through trial and error and a bit of crisis with myself.
I can understand what Vic is saying as well but the thought processes are a bit irrational when considered with a "what happens as a result of this?" Because it could be extremely detrimental to your son's ability to function if he's thrown into an environment like that without any help. Maybe not. Maybe he could surprise us all and thrive from the challenge. Briefly, in middle school, I was shuffled into the special Ed program for my ADD. Best thing that ever happened to me and in high school, when it was no longer needed, I got back into regular classes without the crutch of that. Extra help, if it doesn't actually help... you can stop taking it, right?