Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment I.Q. and grade levels ahead-strong correlation?

This is exactly what I am curious about, this is not logical to me, trying to figure out what makes this possible. A child who teaches themself or is extremely motivated to learn to read at age 2 is an outlier anecdotally, so how could that not be shown in the numbers?

A two year old's brain that can read is not the same as an average or even above average two year old, right?

I do see how reading is different than math, though, great points, that makes sense.

My son will be tested next month, I am not applying for the DYS anytime soon if he does quailify in numbers (he's 4 in Feb.), I was just trying to wrap my head around how some children can perform 2-3 grade levels ahead and it not reflect in the I.Q. scores.

But with other factors, like motivation, the education culture of the home, access to materials/education/exposure, I guess I can see how a child can perform that far ahead but still be within the average or slightly above average range of I.Q.

I just thought it was curious how the DYS stated the 2-3 grade levels ahead in the criteria.

Also, I didn't read that they needed to be globally performing 2-3 levels ahead. I think it's great that they recognize that a child who performs at level in most subjects but is gifted in one subject, that child still needs the support and opportunity to grow in that subject.

I'm a former Special Education Teacher and I would administer the academic achievement tests, it's been a few years and now that I have my sons, I reflect on my experience and knowledge. When I performed these tests, I really did not completely understand them, I know that now, researching these topics. In general, many of my students had a higher I.Q. and low performing scores, so I am trying to wrap my head around the opposite.

Makes sense.

In these instances, while the overall IQ may not indicate giftedness, most likely there is at least one high subtest score.

Yes, many families sacrifice greatly to provide more opportunity for their children, than what the parents had themselves in their youth. Additionally I'm familiar with several autodidacts who frequented the public library and learned, unguided, in their areas of greatest interest and passion. Talk about motivation!

On the downside, there is hothousing and tiger-parenting.

There are myriad sources for parents to tap into for information and self-education in supporting their gifted children. DYS is for the extreme outliers.

Definitely IQ above the specified level for the test used AND 2+ years ahead.

Let me just remind everyone that grade levels ahead based on being able to do work from actual courses, and grade levels ahead based on grade equivalents from a standardized achievement test are two very different propositions, only one of which has significant validity--and it's not the one from the NRT.

And yes, the developmental arc for reading is very different from that for mathematics, and less dependent on access to direct instruction. (One of the reasons not to lean too heavily on grade equivalent scores is the early plateau in reading decoding raw scores.) The change in slope across the lifespan for academic growth also means that 2-3 years ahead at one point in time has a very different meaning from 2-3 years at another point.

Plus, in mathematics, pretty much the whole continent of North America is about 1-2 years behind the rest of the industrialized world, which I don't think is due to the population being a standard deviation lower than the rest of the world in intelligence (though there are moments when that seems rather plausible!).

Not to hijack the thread too much but having recently looked at the SCAT I wonder how predictive it really is. With so few questions in such a narrow format it didnt really seem very interesting assessment wise beyond the CTY application.

That chart is way way off. That's the problem with ratio IQs.

IMO, they spend all that time on memorising coin names (US coins have no denomination printed on them, and much of the first three years mathematics is spent identifying them by sight), faffing about with inches and pounds and such, and spending waaay too much time on fractions due to the aforementioned medieval measuring system.

I have never seen evidence showing that adjusting for race, children in the U.S. are much behind those in other industrialized countries. See for example
Graph of 2012 PISA scores for 65 countries/economies

Ha! Ain't that the truth! We are basically skipping most of 2nd grade math, moving straight on to multiplication and division.

Thanks for the link, Bostonian. I'll have to look it over.

My comment was based on what I know of instructional levels in other industrialized nations (not comprehensive, by any means), not so much the achievement outcomes of said instruction. (Though that has its own twists.) Since the question has to do with grade-levels-ahead, I wanted to introduce into the discussion the scope and sequence of math instruction in specific communities, and their alignment with grade levels. I could have rephrased it as, elementary and secondary math instruction in most of North America appears to be about 1-2 years behind instruction in much of the rest of the first and second world, therefore, our concept of grade-levels-ahead may be accordingly shifted.