Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Questions about GAI

...And I'm hoping Mia will retest her DS using a test with higher ceilings and reapply!

Eema-

62 points is a radical difference. Did you get a 2e diagnosis along with this assessment?

Thanks for the encouragement, Kriston and Mia. I like your tip, Kriston. I really do need to look at evidence that would differentiate her from MG. I'm working on one now to demonstrate precocity. I'm thinking of her early (just turned 4) fascination with WWII and how that spun off in all kinds of directions.

She was very verbal from an early age and we assumed she'd be a great reader. It turns out that her most apparent (on a standardized test anyway) strength is math, and reading is coming a little bit slower. I'm not sure if it has to do with her being in a dual language immersion program. I'm reading Infinity and Zebra Stripes and I am finding similarities in the author's son and DD (math talented, decline in reading interest, school's hesitance to accelerate in math because of language barrier).

Eema, I believe the Gifted Development Center recommends that if there are two or more subtests with 18/19 then child should be retested with SB-LM. I can't say much more about what the results from the SBLM could tell you except that the WISC may be underestimating ability (don't know if it can be used diagnostically).

That still sounds like a very big gap for ADD to be the only cause. I would look carefully at motor skills, motor planning, visual processing, etc.

Good luck puzzling out your little enigma! I have been working on my kids for so many years and still don't really understand all their quirks. But there have been enough "aha!" moments to make the whole figuring out process worth it.

Just curious...Is 2E identified by a discrepancy in composite scores? Or from discrepancy in achievement and IQ tests? How do schools/psych determine this?
DD's WISC discrepancies had her at FSIQ 137 and GAI 153. Her WIAT total math was 149 (math reasoning 154). Her reading was average however, she has had only Spanish literacy instruction since K (she's a native English speaker learning Spanish) and the test was in English. We wonder if her resistance to read is due to a LD or to being taught to decode a language that, initially, had no meaning for her.
Her reading is improving but still behind where we thought she would be by now (she's highly verbal). She did have vision therapy for accomodative spasm last Spring and hated it so we didn't continue (recently her ophthalmologist said it's getting better).
How would scores indicate 2E?

FWIW, our school district looks at the difference b/n the WIAT and the projected-WIAT (based on the WISC-IV). I was told that most school districts use a 15 point spread, ours uses a 21 point spread. Our report did not compute a GAI, nor did they ask for one.

My understanding is that scores might indicate 2E if the discrepancy between scores on different sections of the test are large enough - but sometimes I wonder how that can be, since there are lots of gifted people with average scores for working memory and processing speed and obviously much higher scores for the other two sections, from which the GAI is derived, and surely not all of them are 2E. Am I wrong in the following respect - for an official LD, must the lower scores be exceptionally low compared to average, or is it just compared to the higher scores??

I think that a discrepancy between IQ score and achievement is an alternative way to identify a person as 2E.

I guess I'm just as confused. Since my kids have learning "issues", I think of them as 2E, whether or not they meet some specific definition.

Hi Amamama,
My dd8 is also in a Spanish immersion program. She took the SB after her kindergarten year (her first year of immersion). She is extremely verbal yet her verbal score was her lowest score. I wondered wether the low verbal score was due to the fact that the majority of her language growth for that year was in another language. She currently reads about 5 levels higher than her current grade.

If I remember correctly, all the English speakers in my dd's class were reading at a higher English level than Spanish level by 2nd grade. If this is not the case for your dd, you might investigate her vision issues further. There is another thread on this board that has more information about vision issues.

As Dottie said, a split CAN indicate an LD or 2e issue, but it doesn't ALWAYS mean there is a problem. In general, the greater the split, the more likely it is that there is an issue. Here's one article that mentions performance vs. verbal discrepancy:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/about_sb5_wisc-iv.htm

hth!

Thanks, everyone. I checked on the score differences and there were between 18-32 points on subtests that involved reading and decoding (WIAT and projected WIAT). As you said, Dottie, we have to apply a common sense approach. I don't know if this would have been red-tagged if DD had been learning in English all along.

Thanks for the link, Lorel. It's interesting to see the different areas these tests assess. Maybe we should look at further testing using SBV or SBLM.

I'm struggling with DD's situation because I'm not sure what the scores say. The FSIQ and GAI don't give me a straight answer. Then I have the immersion program to factor in which I feel may depress her scores. I am advocating for more advanced math which the principal has agreed is necessary but we hit roadblocks (DD may miss Spanish vocab if goes too far ahead, doesn't have strong independent reading ability to work on ALEKS, etc). So we just don't know if we should ride it out, try out heterogeneous English classroom, or pursue a gifted program (and use the summer to work on English literacy).

Sorry for the rambling, we feel we're at the crossroads for some big decisions but don't really know what action to take. Sometimes I just want to put it all away and not think about it but then something happens that make me wonder about it all over again!

TexasSummer, does your program teach English literacy at the onset? I believe ours doesn't start until 2nd-3rd grade. DD6 decided in Jan that she wants to learn how to read and write English. We were told last year in K not to teach English reading skills or it may interfere with Spanish. The teacher now has said it's ok if we want to teach English at home. Until what grade does your program go?