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    #220312 07/30/15 11:47 AM
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    When our son was 4, we had him tested because of a variety of issues. I won't go into all the reasons we thought intelligence might play a role. Throughout K, we have struggled with him being disengaged from the classroom. In an effort to use the IAS, we had him tested again. He's 6.

    His scores are significantly lower than expected. At 4, he took the SBV at scored a FSIQ of 124 (nothing super high), but he scored in the 130s on quantitative and fluid reasoning. He scored low in knowledge.

    We just got scores from the WISC-IV and the WIAT. We don't have the full report yet, and I know they did an anxiety screen (he currently sees someone for anxiety, which is a big deal when we have big or unexpected changes), and the Connors CPT.

    WISC:
    Verbal Comp: 127
    Visual Spatial: 108
    Fluid Reasoning: 109
    Working Memory: 110
    Processing: 100
    FSIQ: 117
    GAI: 120

    I guess I'm most baffled by the fluid reasoning score.

    WIAT:
    Word Reading: 114 (2nd grade)
    Spelling: 112 (2nd grade)
    Numerical Operations: 100 (1st grade)

    Now here's the thing. He multiplies and divides and adds and subtracts in his head. I don't understand. AND, I know for a fact he reads and comprehends at a 3rd to 4th grade level.

    Since I don't have the full report, I don't know what the anxiety index is. I know he flat out refused to do the Connors CPT for inattentiveness.

    So...here's my real question. Could anxiety play a role? The tester was not the same person we met with to discuss testing. They have a person that administers the test, and then the Dr. does the full report. He had never met this person. Or do you think I'm reaching. Should I just consider his scores at 4 invalid? I mean, I see what he's capable of and how quickly he learns and his unwillingness to do repetitive work. How am I supposed to help him now in school?

    Thanks for any feedback.

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    Yes, anxiety can have a negative impact on scores. That being said, scores from a four year old are very unstable. Typically, there is not as robust a norming sample of four year olds, thus skewing the sample. Also, there is still a lot of developmental differences among normally developing students at four years old at 6 these have started to even out. Also, I am assuming the WAIS V was given based on the scores which has significantly updated norms compared to the SB 5.

    Last edited by sallymom; 07/30/15 12:15 PM.
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    Yes, it's the WISC V. These scores just don't make since when compared to what I see him doing. His ability. I know scores from four year olds are not as reliable, but I've also read it's rare for them to drop. It'll be interesting to see what the full report says.

    I just don't know if we can handle yet another year of him being in class learning very little. He knows most of the material already and learns rapidly, so once it's mastered, he's ready to move on. Sigh.

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    Trust your gut. In Canada they give all of the scores as 95% confidence intervals, they won't even give us a specific score so instead of a GAI of 120 we would get a GAI of 114-125 (95% CI). Even that is only a 95%CI which means there is a 5% chance it is outside of that. I guess what I'm getting at is that the numbers you get are not as specific as a single FSIQ or GAI number implies.

    We've been through testing twice now. At 6.5 DS wasn't fully cooperative and extremely shy around strangers. He scored gifted but the more and more I read here the more I realized that his real scores might be much higher. Sure enough at 8.75 we retested and his scores were considerably higher.

    Now the much harder question - how to help him in school?
    IME the biggest impact for my kids is their teacher. Having someone who actually looks at the kids in front of them and does what they can to accommodate, excite, teach, help, etc them is key. Good teachers don't necessarily need test scores to show them, they figure it out by getting to know the kids. We've been lucky with a couple of these. In fact my DD (who hasn't been tested yet) got far more special stuff out of her teacher this past year than DS did with two psych reports and an IEP that she had to follow by law.

    Does your school have more than one option per grade? Can you ask that he be put in the class with the best match? If you know of other gifted kids in the school you could try asking that they be grouped.

    We've also had many conversations with our DS about actually showing that he knows the work even though it is "boring". DS also hates repetition but he would also refuse to even do 1 problem if it was too easy which of course made it hard to prove that he knew the stuff in the first place. This has been a HUGE thing that he's finally starting to understand.

    Hope something in all of the babbling helps - good luck!

    Last edited by chay; 07/30/15 12:57 PM.
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    Thank you Chay. They also did the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children, so I'm anxious to see what that shows. I think it'll tell me a lot. on the Conners CPT, he flat out refused to complete the test because it was boring. We have talked to him about showing what he knows, but he's stubborn!

    I just know these scores are not an accurate reflection. I mean, I'm not seeking for him to be profoundly gifted, but I also know my child. This really threw me. The school needs to scores, but now I want to hold them until I have the full report. The whole picture.

    What really gets me is that we were going to drive three hours away to have a full evaluation done, but the cost was outrageous, so we thought we'd start here. Insurance does not pay for these things.

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    See? That's what I thought. How can he provide an accurate report if he wasn't there?

    Also, there may be a 2e thing going on here. I don't know how the doctor would know that. I do know he struggles with transition and change and when things deviate from what he thought was going to happen. He thought the doctor was going to give him the test. Also, he knows part of the reason I want to scores is because we've been talking about acceleration. I told him that I wouldn't push for acceleration if he doesn't want to move up (that would be bad for a kid like him), but I know it's been on his mind.

    Last edited by newtogifted; 07/30/15 02:08 PM.
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    I'm not an expert, just a parent, but I'll offer up a few thoughts.

    First look - the Verbal portion of his WISC is his strength, and it's a good solid high number. While not PG, it would be high enough (most likely) to get him into a gifted pull-out in elementary school in our district. The first few years of elementary school are focused quite a bit on things that tie into verbal strengths, so chances are that a student with strength in that area might very well be under challenged in school, or bored if they were looking to school to be all about academic learning in the very early years. I'd also look at what's going on in his school - is it a traditional sit at your desk and learn to read school, or is it project-based learning, or something non-traditional? We have a lot of discussions here about what works best for gifted kids to keep them excited about learning when school can't quite meet their needs, but fwiw, the same applies (from my perspective) even to "average" IQ kids (which your ds obviously isn't).

    Next thought - what do his subtest scores look like? Are they fairly consistent or do they fall all over the place (highs/medium/lows) within the same category? If there is a lot of inconsistency from subtest to subtest that can be a sign of not paying full attention/being distracted or some type of challenge/LD. Or just being tired - another thing to do is to google to find the order of administration of the subtests, then check to see if he's scoring lower toward the end of the test.

    On the WIAT - I suspect that in most beginning first grade classrooms (which is where I think your ds will be in the fall?) you'll find there are some kids who are working at 2nd grade level, so he's most likely not alone in where he's technically at, if the WIAT scores are accurate. OTOH, it's also important to understand that, for example, a 2nd grade equivalent given with a WIAT score doesn't mean that the student is ready to work in 2nd grade in school; it means that the score is what the average 2nd grader scored on the same subtest.

    You mentioned that you had him tested at 4 for a variety of issues - can you let us know what some of the issues were other than suspecting he was gifted? That might give a clue into possible reasons for low scores that aren't representative of his true intelligence.

    One last note - one of my dds had a relatively large drop (approximately 20 points) in IQ when tested at 5 (higher) and 7 (lower). I don't really know which is accurate to be honest - I've been around enough technically "gifted" kids to know that it's just not possible to predict actual IQ based on vocabulary, thoughts shared, etc. At least not for a parent like me smile One of the most successful high school students I know (all-around, high-achieving) is the dd of a friend who, when her dd was 5-6 years old, was convinced she was PG based on the thoughts she shared with her mom and the academics she was completing. Once she had an actual IQ test it turns out her true FSIQ is around 120 - but her mom never stopped advocating for "more" for her just because she wasn't PG. Neither should any of us parents - you have to trust your gut, go with what you see as your child's needs, and advocate to see that he gets appropriate challenge in school. If you have reason to suspect 2e hiding abilities, dig deeper.

    And even if this is his actual accurate profile, that doesn't mean he doesn't need challenge in school. When you meet with the school, be sure to focus on samples of his work (from class and at home), and what he is telling you about school. He may not have sky-high gifted scores, but he's got good strong solid scores, with a strong Verbal score and a reason (possibly) to suspect the scores might not be representative of his true abilities.

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

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    Cognitive:

    1. The WISC-V has much newer norms than the SBV, which could easily account for 3 or 4 points off the global measure.

    2. The SBV does not include measures of processing speed. This makes the best comparison to the SBV global measure the WISC-V GAI--which is only that 4 points lower.

    3. The index structure for the SBV is quite different from that of the WISC-V, which makes it more challenging to make direct comparisons cluster to cluster. On the SBV, fluid reasoning is a combination of verbal reasoning (most similar to Similarities on the WISC-V) and nonverbal reasoning (most similar to Matrix Reasoning on the WISC-V). Note that these tasks are in different clusters from each other on the WISC.

    There is no quantitative reasoning cluster in the WISC-V core subtests (though one can be calculated, if the supplementary Arithmetic subtest is administered). The closest measure is half of the fluid reasoning index.

    Cognitive bottom line: I would say it is not necessary to doubt the validity of either test result on the basis of score difference alone. Anxiety, OTOH, is another story, and could very well have depressed his test performance--but that is likely to show up on the MASC.

    Achievement:

    1. His WIAT-III results are actually within the range of normal variation predicted based on his VCI (which, as noted previously, is in line with his SBV global measure).

    2. Reading comprehension was not assessed, most likely because he is considered a kindergartner, and there are no grade norms for that subtest at that level. He may decode at a higher level in connected text than he does in isolated word reading, as he is able to use his strong language reasoning skills to support accurate decoding. This is a reasonably normal behavior in many high-cognitive early readers.

    In general, I find that teachers are more convinced by measures with direct relationship to their curriculum and personal teaching experience--such as performance on placement tests, end-of-course/end-of-unit tests, reading selections that they have used in instruction. Most people more readily accept data that they feel they understand, can interpret independently, and can place contextually.


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    Polarbear. His school is a traditional sit and learn setting, which is hard for him. He does do much better with project-based learning. And no concessions are made for his boundless energy and need to move. They work on a color system that just doesn't work with him. He loses recess, has to do laps, and sometimes has to sit by himself during lunch for behavior issues.

    I don't have the subtest scores. I'm hoping the full report will shed some light on what happened here, only the person writing the full report was not in the room with him during testing. I do know they gave him the WISC-V, the WIAT, MASC, and Conners CPT all within a 2-hour time span with no breaks. They gave the Conners for Inattentiveness and Impulsivity in between the two tests. He refused to complete the test because it was flashing letters. You are supposed to press the spacebar for all letters except 'X.' He really pushes back on monotonous things, so I'm not surprised. I could see that test throwing him with whatever came after.

    We tested him at 4 because we had moved him from an in-home to a preschool at 3. They quickly moved him in with the four and five year olds because he was bored and causing issues. They struggled with him at nap time, as it was a small facility and he was required to lay still for the entire 2 hours. He requires less sleep than most. The 3-year-old teacher, a former Montessori teacher expressed concerns to us that if we didn't take a proactive role early, he would get in trouble. She expressed he was smart. We said, "we know," and she said, "I don't think you understand HOW smart he is. He will get bored if you don't keep him engaged and is the type of kid that will get in trouble." She was very nice about it. I knew he was above average, but I wanted to know what we were dealing with to determine the best course of action for him. He spent much of his time doing ABC worksheets and basic counting, both of which he mastered at an early age. He got bored and we eventually moved him to a play-based facility with teachers that would do extra "science" experiments with him on the side. He thrived. Kindergarten has seen us back to sitting still and doing worksheets.

    He is the kind of kid that won't "perform" for you. For instance, they started a pilot reading program that pairs kids according to level rather than age. We got a letter stating he would stay in K. When I was reading with him, I asked him to tell me a few things about what he just read; he said, "I don't remember." I said, "That's why you're staying in K for reading." His response was typical. He said, "Fine! I'll tell you," and proceeded to give a detailed account of the book.

    I did ask him if he was nervous about the tests. He said "Yes." He also said he got bored and tired of it. He also expressed a lot of concern about possibly leaving his best friend if he were moved up a grade. I told him we're not moving him up a grade, but now he's obsessively worried he won't be in the same class with this friend. He becomes very attached to people as well and brings on a lot of anxiety. It's a problem and is the reason he is in counseling. He said he was thinking of a lot of different things during the tests.

    He does not know I have the scores.

    No matter what, I'm still going to advocate for him to make sure he is challenged in school!

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    aeh. He mastered all end-of-year testing. I asked if they would give him end-of-year tests for first grade. They wouldn't do that. I'm hoping we get a good teacher fit in the upcoming year!

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