Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment OLSAT scores

I got my son's OLSAT scores- 99.9% total, 99.9% verbal, 97.9% nonverbal. He had gotten on his WISC 99% total, 99% verbal, 98% nonverbal. I guess they are fairly similar. He only missed 6 of 64 questions; he said he ran out of time and left 2 blank.

congratulations

Congrats. I would ask about those scores a little further, though, b/c some of what you were told doesn't make sense. The OLSAT doesn't have the ability to give scores at .something. Scores are reported only at 98th percentile, 99th percentile, etc. Even if you get every single question on the entire test, the 99th percentile is the highest score you'd be given.

For the WISC, there is no "nonverbal" test. Is that PRI? I'd want to know all of the subtests (verbal, perceptual, working memory, & processing speed) myself so I could see how the total profile looks. The SB, on the other hand, does have verbal & nonverbal sections. Are you sure that they gave him the WISC and not the SB? They are, of course, both IQ tests so maybe I'm being nitpicky here .

That's really good. My dd9 got an overall 93% on olsat. She didn't finish and had 12 left. She was identied as gifted with her score plus a really high including a perfect on nclb test. You have inspired me to ask for the individual scores. Our principal hand scored them and I felt bad about asking. 99 anything is really good! Congrats ! Are they going to make adjustments at school?

The percentiles are on the printout the school sent us. It looks like it is from Pearson, who I think makes the test. They were not hand-scored.
It says the percentiles are compared to kids his age who took the test nationally. So for Cricket, you can have 99.9% etc on the OLSAT. My other son got on the Ravens test at 99.1%. You can have a decimal point on some of these test scores.
For the WISC, I was quoting his WISC scores from 3 years ago, from memory. I'd have to look at his subtests to be precise. His GAI was 144 and he was accepted into MENSA on that.
I do think the OLSAT is not an especially useful screen for the gifted program, but that is what our district uses. The verbal is almost only analogies, which many children may not be familiar with.
No, we don't have any accomodations (well, except that he is hearing impaired, and he has an IEP for that). He qualified for CTY via the SCAT test, but we haven't done anything for that.
Supposedly our gifted program is a grade level ahead, but it starts in 4th grade, next year.

At the bottom of his generic OLSAT report, it says: "scores based on normative data copyright 2003 by NCS Pearson, Inc." I'm sure the school bought the generic Pearson computerized system adn it spits these reports on based on the scores.
You could probably ask the principal who hand-scored it to contact Pearson to more fully analyze the data.

Or school didn't want to spend the money on the program to score the results which is why je tlscored it by hand. All forth grader took the test and no parents got the results. I got the 93 percent over the phone because I called him and asked. When I asked for the breakdown he said he would have to dig it out and re score and calculate to give me that info and wondered why I needed it anyway. So, I tried not to be a pain and left it alone. He scored 140 tests by himself over thanksgiving break and I didn't want to be rude by making him do more. Maybe I can pay to have the test scored properly. He let me know that somebody did score 99 percentile. I felt like he was implying that since those parents are happy I should be too ugh!

I stand corrected, then. I was going off of what I was told when I was approved to administer the OLSAT, ITBS, SAT-10, & CogAT to homeschoolers. The company that contracted w/ the publishers told me that the tests didn't have the specificity to distinguish beyond straight percentiles and wouldn't give decimals. I've never seen scores like that, but I also haven't tested a lot of kids or a lot of gifted kids!

Re your ds' IQ scores, his FSIQ must have been 130+ as well b/c Mensa won't take the GAI (http://www.us.mensa.org/join/testscores/qualifyingscores/). I find that silly myself, especially b/c they take a lot of other non-IQ scores but I'm not the one choosing what they take!

By "regular" SAT, do you mean SAT-10? (I see you edited while I was posting!)

Sample OLSAT score report here: http://www.pearsonassessments.com/hai/images/dotcom/olsat8/OLSAT_Brochure.pdf agrees with you.

You'd think the publishers would see an advantage to coming up with new acronyms, rather than duplicating someone else's!