Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What the heck?!?...WIAT-III results back.....

Hello all! Sorry this is kind of long but I'm getting worried and I desperately need your wisdom! Briefly...Everything going along great...Principal tells us DS will finally be subject accelerated in science and social studies...We are thrilled. Then the phone call..."First one in the district, so to be sure and have everything documented, we need to have him achievement tested as well" (The kid has already had the SBS AND the WISC(sigh) both showing highly gifted (slow processing & memory) Both psychologists stated in summary he is more than ready to handle classes three years or so ahead...Last year took the EXPLORE as a 5th grader that showed he did as well as or better than 85% of 8th graders in science and reading, which are the subjects we want him accelerated in. So get the WIAT-III scores back and I have no idea what to make of these scores. Pseudoword decoding he scored 5% (yikes!) but reading comprehension 88%, listening comprehension 95%, essay composition 87%, word reading 63% sentence composition 42%, and then spelling 13% (Spelling not surprising) Then we have the math which is really odd....math problem solving 90%, numerical operations 87% but then math fluency in addition is only 6%??? Oral reading and oral expression, which I thought would be sky high was only 63% and 47%. This is a kid who reads and comprehends college textbooks and has the most amazing vocab and oral expression! What gives??? I am completely clueless! Then there is a sheet that is titled "Differences Between Composite Standard Scores" and under "Significant Difference" there is a yes for 11 out of 21 catagories. Should I be worried??? Could these scores hurt his subject acceleration??? We have a "Team" meeting with everyone Friday and I want to be totally prepared. I know DS is underachieving but these scores seem so stange to me. Please, please help me figure it all out. I have more numbers if you need more info on anything. I sure would appreciate it! Thank you so much!!!

I'm new to all this, but if sounds as it there is a wide discrepancy between the first tests your son did, and this new set of achievement testings. Was he feeling ok the day of the test? Was he just not " into " it so to speak...there could be so many variables. I hope someone on here can guide you to more interpretation, there are many on here that are a wealth of knowledge on all these testings etc. I hope the team meeting is positive and the plans continue on as you had planned for.

I am not an expert but to me that pattern seems quite cohesive and I think you should be investigating stealth dyslexia. His comprehension is great but he can't read without context, or spell, you say his speech is great but his oral reading is average, his math reasoning is there but simple computations are problematic.

Are the results that are higher still lower than you expected? Could there also be an aspect of having a bad day, not liking the tester or feeling bad because he could tell he was being tested on lots of stuff he wasn't good at? Could his age or grade have been entered wrongly and impacted the results? I don't know anything about this actual test.

My guess, and it's only a guess. (I get my final reports next week for this years testing of my girls) I'm thinking you might be seeing the working memory and processing delays in play with his achievement. His SB and WISC are the IQ, so the potential, the WIAT is what he can show at any given time. How slow were his processing and working memory on the WISC? Does he have any trouble with handwriting? How are the composite scores overall? That would determine if they are going to present a problem with the school as well as how you approach it.

Take this with a grain of salt as I have administered WIAT-II but it's been a few years, and I have not seen WIAT-III (there may be differences I'm not aware of). My experience with WIAT was not with gifted students either, so I don't have direct experience with interpreting scores. That said, a couple of things immediately occur to me as I read your post.

The way that the reading comprehension section is structured on the WIAT, students are given certain passages based on their current grade level. To use the computer scoring, the administrator has to administer only those passages. For a highly gifted reader, I think that there would be a ceiling effect that impacts the way in which percentiles look. The student also doesn't see the question in writing, as it is presented orally.

Pseudoword is as it sounds....made up words. It looks at a students understanding of phonics. Some students are great readers but struggle with this activity because they keep trying to make what they see into real words, or because they don't rely much on phonics to approach new words in reading. This might be a student who accumulates many new words as part of reading vocabulary, but mispronounces them when they say them out loud. This would impact the word reading score as well. It doesn't impact silent reading comprehension because they are able to infer meaning (and to attach meaning to that word from then on) even if they are unaware that they don't actually know how to pronounce it.

Math fluency: this is timed. Student works through as many problems as possible in a limited amount of time, no skips allowed. You mentioned slow processing in WISC and SBS, so I wouldn't a high score here. The more relevant score is the problem solving score which measures general content and is not timed.

Essay composition is scored subjectively and score reflects grammatical and punctuation errors, as well as spelling errors (and unless they've come up with a better prompt in version III, the prompt is bo-ring.

Oral expression is also somewhat subjective. One task is fluency (name as many.....in one minute as you can).

Personally, I don't see the connection between WIAT and science and social studies curriculum. If you have a child who chooses to read college textbooks in these subjects and who demonstrates comprehension of those textbooks, that is surely more relevant. Maybe an accommodation or agreement that he will type new vocabulary into an online dictionary as homework (so that he can hear the pronunciation of the word) could address any concerns about word reading/pseudoword.

Hello Triplejmom, mumofthree, melmichigan, and Taminy Thank you so very much for responding! Thanks to mumofthree, I have been frantically searching the internet on stealth dyslexia... Seriously though, thank you for bringing that up. I would never have thought of that and it was/could be certainly something to look into. After reading about it he does have a few stealth characteristics, but I attribute it more to his lovely ENFP personality. He has absolutely beautiful handwriting, has never had problems with the alphabet/sounds, no motor coordination problems, never confuses L/R, great in reading comp, great in written output for essays, his oral reading choices do match his verbal and cognitive ability...Dyslexia does run in the family though, so I guess I wouldn't necessarily rule it out totally. He seemed to like the tester, wasn't tired or sick...After meeting the school's expert in "testing" though, I was a little apprehensive. I mentioined the EXPLORE and she had no idea what it was. After speaking with her more, I found out she's a special ed teacher and teaches summer school....No experience with gifted kids and I got the feeling that she wasn't very experienced with the WIAT-III either. The school had just switched from the WJ but according to Mr. Principal, she's "certified" to administer it LOL Oh well, some of the scores just seem so off to me. I agree that a science and social studies acceleration shouldn't be a problem. Listening comprehension, essay composition, and reading comprehension were all equiv to over 12th grade and I'm just asking to go from 6th grade to 7th grade acceleration haha Maybe I should ask for higher???

Taminy, thank you for all of the information! Truly appreciated Question for you or anyone else that may know...Next to reading comprehension it says 39* >12.9 grade equiv >19:11 age equiv... What does that star 39 mean? Also, on the front page under subtest "Oral Reading Fluency" it says percetile of 47% but then on another page under "Oral Word Flunecy" he has a percentile of 98%...Why such a big difference? Should I also be concerned about the 11 out of 21 checked yes to the "significant difference" column ??? What exactly does that mean? Ugh.....I have a headache

Oh great...Husband just informed me that the tester told him this was her first time administering the WIAT...Hmmmm Also, found out that someone else inputed the scores and that she would be at the "team meeting" to answer any questions about the test. Why would this random score-inputter lady be there and not the actual woman who met and administered my son the test??? I find that odd. Anyone else???

I'm not sure about the symbols or most of the interpretive terms--it's been too long since I've administered or scored a WIAT.

A caution about grade equivalent scores though: they don't equate to grade level ability. I always have difficulty communicating this one, but here's a link and a quote that might help

"What the grade equivalent score actually measures is how typical students at the grade level specified would perform on the test that has been given. In other words, the grade equivalent of 10.4 does not indicate that the 4th grade is doing of doing 10th grade work. Rather, it indicates that the 4th grade student has performed as well as a typical 10th grade student would have performed on the 4th grade test. If the student is performing on grade level, that is a 4th grade student taking the test in the 10th month of 4th grade receives a score of 4.10, then it simply indicates that he/she is performing right at the average for other 4th graders in the norming sample, which is the 50th percentile and 50th NCE."

link for quote

I wouldn't worry too much about it being the tester's first time with WIAT if she has administered WJ before. The general administration techniques are the same. Scoring the writing and the oral expression would be new, but otherwise I wouldn't expect much impact. The unknown for me is how appropriate the test is for gifted students at this age. If Dottie were around, she could probably address that....{sigh}.

Perhaps go into the meeting with an eye to discussing whether the test has anything to offer in terms of suggesting accommodations that might be helpful, but not as if it is a determination about whether or not acceleration is appropriate. Presumably all of the determining factors that led to the decision are still in place. You might gently remind the rest of the team of that if they get too stuck on this one test. Good luck--I know going into these meetings is always nerve-wracking

Thank you!!!

When I first started to give the WIAT, I prepared my reports and discussed my results in collaboration with a school psychologist, so this random score-inputter lady may not be random at all!

Sadly, most of the time that public schools give the WISC and WIAT, they are looking for a Specific Learning Disability and a possible Special Education eligibility. Most students have some kind of pattern of strengths and weaknesses, but a 1.5 standard deviation gap (significant difference) between cognitive and achievement in a specific area often indicates a learning disability. We can't make a decision on SpEd based on that one difference, though. If we did see that kind of difference in the results, we would know that we needed to ask the question, "Does this student have a learning disability?"

The answer in that situation (as far as the law is concerned) comes after the whole team has examined the evidence, the experts (including the parents) have had their say, and questions have been asked and answered. In most cases, the team reaches a consensus. If the team does not agree, there are many possible next steps.

Sadly, pathetically, I have never been involved in a meeting where these scores were used to determine if someone is gifted. I have some students in my classes that have been sort of informally identified as gifted, but none of them have actually been assessed as far as I know.

{sigh}

Thanks for your input Beckee I just really want to be prepared for the "team meeting" and not be blindsided by a potential LD whole discussion. I don't want them to get distracted from our original goal (before this achievement test) which is to subject accelerate in his strenghs. Like I said before, he has had the SB5 and WISC which shows him gifted, plus the EXPLORE....I'm just so concerned that his low scores in pseudoword decoding, spelling, and math fluency (addition) are going to throw the "team" off and start talking about him as potentially learning disabled (not saying that he can't be both gifted and LD...)and we don't get to the real point that the poor kid is going crazy from boredom. On the WIAT-III, I believe he reached the ceiling on reading comprehension at >12.9 grade equiv? Yes? Any advice on keeping everybody on the original goal?

Use the "broken record" technique. Just keep repeating your position every time they start going off topic listen for a while but bring the discussion back around like a scratched record.

If I were you, I would ask your kid about the part of the test where he had to read a bunch of allegedly-nonexistent words ("nad" used to throw me in the old list, as it is slang for gonad).

You'll want to have some clue about what was going through his mind while you're sitting in that meeting. Nobody qualifies for Special Education because they can't spell. And few children have any trouble with spelling in a language that is regularly spelled (Spanish, for instance).

In my experience you may have to battle the "I understand his potential is X,Y,Z (based on SB5 and WISC) but his achievement is showing A,B,C (WIAT)" type of conversation. Prepare yourself for the arguement of potential versus ability. The broken record technique is helpful with that. If you look at his processing and working memory scores you will get an idea if they are going to bring up concerns with keeping up with in class material and homework based on those scores, but in all reality they probably still fall into the "average" range and shouldn't really impact anything. Gasp, a child can be GT and test "average". If those scores are below average and in any way impact your son's performance in day to day class then you could ask for accomodations.

I am late to the discussion, but agree with those that have pointed to the possibility of a reading and writing disability. His score on the psuedo word decoding and spelling both indicate that he is not proficient with the sound symbol relationship, word patterns and phonics. Thus, he may have tremendous difficulty with the lower level skills of reading: decoding (getting the words off the page). No surprisingly, his comprehension is higher, but it is most likely compromised by inefficiencies with word reading and fluency.

His math skills also indicate a potential difficulty with lower levels of reading. It is very very common for people with dyslexia to have difficulty with rote facts such as math computation. At the same time, they can be brilliant and exceptionally gifted in math problem solving and math applications.

These issues run parallel to scores in the cognitive realm - you mention that his VCI and PRI scores are off the charts, yet his working memory and processing are much lower in comparison. It is the later that can cause bottle necks in reading/decoding/fluency and in math computation. The former goes to his higher level abstract reasoning skills that play into good comprehension and math problem solving.

I would want to dig deeper on the issue of the dyslexia and would request further reading/literacy testing. Your son could be 2-E - someone that would benefit from remedial reading instruction so that his decoding can improve to the level of his thinking. Most often, diagnosticians would use some or all of these tests: CTOPP, GORT, WRMT, TOWRE, TOWL and others. In addition to remediation, he would most likely benefit from extra time, computer with spell check for writing, calculator for math, audio books/ electronic reader for all written material.

These issues are separate from his ability to access high level science and social studies. However, if he cannot access and take meaning from written material because he is inefficient at the word reading level and at written output, it will be difficult for him to learn in a traditional classroom without accommodations. So much of the material is taught via the written word and assessed via writing, that if he indeed has struggles in this area, he may not be able to convey his understanding and knowledge and teachers will underestimate him.

These links may help:
http://www.interdys.org/
http://www.ldonline.org/article/Assistive_Technology_Tools%3A_Reading
http://concordspedpac.org/Whichtest.htm

Best of luck - you clearly have a very bright child. I think you have to issues to consider:
1. Does my child have an LD that needs to be addressed with instruction, accommodations or both?
2. Is acceleration appropriate?

These are not mutually exclusive. If you say yes to #1, this does not preclude #2. But if your child does have a LD, I urge you to address it so that it does not cause a bottle neck in future years.

Hello to all and thank you again for taking the time to reply! mich, you mentioned a few things that I'm just not sure about..."Access and take meaning from written material" I understand that this means reading comprehension and being able to read and then write down what he has read??? On the WIAT he reached the ceiling on reading comp and on the EXPLORE as a 5th grader, he scored 85% better than 8th graders in reading and science. He is able to read or listen to something and write beautiful essays with full comprehension. When he was stuck in his 5th grade class with reading, he would always score 100% in comprehension. Someone had mentioned earlier "difficulty in reading shorter passages, directions..." I see no problem with that. One thing he cannot do when he's writing, is spell everything correctly but it's not a complete disaster. You can certainly figure it out and his handwriting is gorgeous. If his comprehension is so high, why would he meed audio books or an electronic reader for all written material? He reads high-level (with comprehension)for pleasure constantly. With the pseudoword decoding....He reads so much that I'm sure he has just memorized the words. In the younger years, I remember him scoring always high in phonics. I don't understand going into remeidal reading to learn how to deocde nonsense words. I guess I just don't understand the sense in remeidal reading when he can already "see" and understand the meaning of higher level words. With his ENFP personality, I think he would literally go bonkers if he had to go backward in remedial reading when he is so used to reading and comprehending college-level books. I am clearly not an expert here, so am I missing something? Please help me understand You did mention a computer with spell check...Now that would be fabulous since his spelling is below average. His depth of thinking is incredible but certainly does not match his spelling or sentence structure. Is that common to request a personal laptop computer in the classroom for written activities? Wow if so, I would be all over that!!! Since he scored below average in spelling, would that be reasonable to ask for that? I just want to be sure that this meeting is focused on his acceleration not on him being potentially LD, dyslexic, or whatever. To me that's a seperate topic to be discussed at a later time. What he needs now, is acceleration to match his level of thinking and to keep his love of learning fueling

I think some of the remediating mentioned is more like what we did with my DD. She had extremely high comprehension and very poor spelling. We went back and did a phonetic approach to spelling, with gives you the phonograms and the rules that apply, then moved to root word, prefix and suffix meaning. Often spelling is approached as a list of words to memorize and as one gets older if they don't have those rules it becomes more difficult to spell and decode, especially unknown words without context.

All of the scores you mentioned can also be impacted by processing and working memory issues, so it may be as simple as that. You just need to keep coming back to your last phrase or two, "acceleration to match his level of thinking". Only you know if the possible bottlenecks indicated by his scores could hinder an acceleration, but that might be the basis of concern you are hearing from others.

Hi melmichigan...Sorry for all the questions Did you or the school recognize/provide the phonetic approach? How long before you saw progress and was it significant? Was she given any accommodations in the classroom? Was she accelerated in her reading comprehension? Interesting. I like the phonetic approach, especially if we can do it at home. I never realized his spelling was so "horrific" ... He always brought home 100% on spelling tests and never had too much of a problem memorizing spelling lists. When he was younger, the school never mentioned difficulties in phonics...In fact, he always scored very high on phonics tests, worksheets etc... Weird. P.S. His father is a HORRIBLE speller LOL

Hello to all! Yayyyyy!!! An update...The meeting that I was so dreading went great! The WIAT-III test interpreter was there and she was absolutely fantastic. She only briefly mentioned the low spelling and decoding but firmly stated that in no way should that prohibit DS from accelerating. I could go on and on but won't haha...The whole team had no hesitation agreeing that DS should be accelerated in science and social studies...Everyone signed the papers! They were all so supportive that I just couldn't believe it. My husband and I stumbled out of there just numb. Thank you again for all of your support! All of the tears, worry, frustration, and advocacy was/is worth it. There IS hope for all of our amazing kids and I will continue to cross my fingers for each of them

Yippee! Wonderful news!

I am really glad everything worked out! My DD is advanced in history and science, it can be challenging to get the school to make accomodations for those subjects.

We remediate my DD's spelling at home. She now homeschools full time because don't have gifted laws and once she moved to the middle school there weren't any accomodations for GT available at her level. She always aced the pretests and rarely missed a spelling word until we hit a wall about 5th/6th grade. That is when we figured out she was just memorizing everything be it at school or things she found in her reading (lots of nonfiction).

While she was in school she had accomodations for writing, she used a computer for lengthy assignments (she attended part time under a dual enrollment). Yes, she has very high comprehension. I go this week to get her latest WISC/WIAT results but when she was tested in 3rd grade it was high school level. She struggles more with some of the fiction, especially inference meaning, but she is 2E, with Aspergers, so that is par for the course.

Melmichigan, have you found any good curriculum materials for working on inference? We're still looking...

DeeDee