Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Sharing IQ results with teacher?

Are you supposed to share your kid's IQ results with his or her teacher? Wondering what the protocol is there...

It depends on your need and your personal views. I chose not to give anyone including my son IQ numbers. I want them to see and work with the child, not the number. I don't want him to be categorized by the expectations that number brings. I'd rather they use face value....JMO

I'm with Shari. If it comes within a report/analysis, I'd black out the actual number but share the report and recommendations... Once bitten; twice shy...

jojo

It depends. IQ number helped us get a math acceleration we badly needed. But it also heightened the 2E problem-- "You're so smart, why can't you ..."

I'd say my default is to keep it private unless there is a compelling reason to share it.

DeeDee

I do with my twice exceptional child's teachers because they have access to the report in his IEP anyway, and I'd prefer to give them the abbreviated picture since I know most won't read beyond the accommodations. We've had teachers who have questioned the IQ on both ends of the spectrum - some who were convinced the learning disability skewed the results lower and some who were convinced it was too high because of the gaps they'd seen in him (stil counting on fingers, horrid spelling, etc.). So I've learned it's better to give them the full picture so that they expect the gaps but also expect the abilities as well.

My older son, who was high gifted, was different. I didn't share it with the teachers. My daughter chose not to get tested although the screening showed her well within the gifted IQ range, so it wasn't part of our dialogue at all.

We did share this info with the local school before DS went to kindergarten, because we wanted to show how different our kiddo was so he could get some differentiation. Now he's at a school for HG kids, and the test scores were part of the application packet. I'm not sure if the teachers know or care what the actual numbers are - it might just be the Gifted Coordinator who got the numbers. If we start running into a period at this school where DS is underchallenged again, we may discuss the LOG with the teachers, to show he's different and then some.

As for sharing with our DS, at this point I don't think he even knows what IQ scores are, and we have no plans to share at this young age (he's almost 8). When he was tested at age 4, we told him that the testing showed that he had the ability to learn certain things much more quickly than most kids. We do want him to know that he's different in some ways. (I remember thinking I must not be so smart because when the teacher asked a question and no one answered, even though I thought the answer was easy, I started to think I must be missing something if no one else raised their hand, and so I wouldn't raise my hand and I would wonder what I was missing....)

I share the percentile.

We plan on discussing the results of our DD10's IQ testing later this week as we yet again ask for more math acceleration. This year DD moved to a private school that has more kids working at a high level, but because my DD likes to hide her abilities -- in part because she thinks it's "impolite" to tell the teacher she already knows all the math -- the teacher keeps telling us that "lots of kids think the math isn't hard." We've told her teacher repeatedly that she already knew all this math last year, and provided MAP results to attest to the specifics, but we keep being told that she'll learn new things in November or December or January or . . . and that the class has "lots of kids like her." Since DD tested at the 99.9%ile, that just probably isn't true in a school with only 40 kids in her grade. So, at this point, we feel like we might need to "shock" them a bit to really see that she needs new material at a faster pace with less practice and that she not only can handle it but that she craves it. The main thing we plan to emphasize, though, is the interpretation of the results and what they mean for her learning experience day-to-day, rather than the number itself, per se.

In our case, DD's public elementary school did the testing and so they, obviously, used the results for placement, although I don't think any of the teachers other than those involved in the first acceleration actually knew the results of the testing.

DD10 and DS8 don't know the results of the testing. We told DD that she tends to learn at a much faster pace with less practice and that she sometimes understands things that others have a harder time understanding, but just because she feels quite different from others her age. We haven't really said quite as much to DS since his acceleration happened earlier and he fits in well with his older classmates, but he does know that math is a strong area for him.

I'm guessing that most teachers will not have any experience in interpreting what 99.9 means in contrast to 99 percentile, and that there are nuances to interpreting the 99.9 (e.g., did the child hit the ceiling, etc.) The kids at that level are rare.


I think this is important. Sharing the psychologist's interpretation of the results, where there was talk of radical acceleration and DS not fitting in the normal school setting without major differentiation, was what really swayed the school staff in our situation. Once a child hits a particular school's cutoff for GT, the numbers themselves are pretty meaningless to most people, I would guess. If you can afford it, getting a written report with IQ testing is quite useful (to parents too).

That's pretty much what we've found as well. School personnel (even some school counselors with Masters degrees in counseling or psychology) often don't have enough experience with levels of giftedness to understand the differences between kids who are in the 95th percentile in one area and kids who are in the 99th and above composite. 99.9th, like st pauli girl noted, doesn't seem to mean any more than 99th either to many educators. The tests they are familiar with don't give that degree of specificity.