Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment what tests should she have? - aeh can you help?

DD6 is being evaluated for a new school next year. She needs to have an IQ and an achievement test. It could potentially be a great school for her. We suspect that she is at least HG and also LD. So, we'd like tests that can showcase both ends of her abilities. She appears to be quite mathy and very mechanically and spatially talented. But she also STILL struggles with learning basic phonics after a year of kindergarten. Her big brother is DYS and also LD. I'd love your help with this!!

Our tester from the Hoagie's list liked the WIAT as an achievement test for that age group (our DYS was 6-years-old). Also, DS is quite mathy and did very well on the WISC IV. Not sure about the WISC V with mathy kiddos, but others here will probably have good advice.

Best of luck!

Thanks so much Loy58!

I'd love to hear from others!

If you are seeing struggles with phonics, you will want direct testing of phonological processing. The WIAT gets at some of the easy skills, but a child who is verbally gifted, especially so young, may well score quite high on those. So you want to make sure you assess complex phonological skills too, using something like the CTOPP. LD testing usually looks at a range of memory measures as well (e.g. WRAML), to look for deficits in retrieval and fluency, etc.

It's important to remember that achievement tests don't expect much of 6 year olds, especially when it comes to reading and writing, so it's quite possible for gifted abilities to completely mask any underlying LDs in something like the WIAT. It's also important to differentiate between what she can do, and whether she can do it with the ease and speed you would expect given her ability as measured by the WISC.

Platypus got to this first.

For achievement, I prefer tests that have WISC-V-linked norms, such as the WIAT-III and KTEA-3, for LD evals. In general, I find the KTEA-3 to be better both for younger children, and for children at the upper extremes, as the floor means both that some younger children (below age six) have no opportunity to demonstrate certain areas of strength, and that some younger children's weaknesses are obscured by the limited expectations, and because the item set design of the WIAT can create artificial ceilings for very high-functioning children (notably in reading comprehension and oral reading fluency). In the case of your DD, these may or may not be issues. She is above age six, so she would have nearly every subtest. Reading is not her strength, so she is unlikely to have her reading peaks flattened. The concern in her case would be that raised by platypus, which is that the expectations are low enough that some weaknesses might not be picked up. I'm not as concerned about this as I might be with another child, though, since you mention that she is still struggling with kindergarten-level phonics. That is likely to show on WIAT testing.

The KTEA-3 has a larger pool of phonological processing assessments, if the examiner chooses to use them. The WISC-V actually has a few phonological processing tests, as well, among its supplemental tasks. I would agree that the CTOPP is among the better instruments for this, and that the evaluation needs to probe for higher-level phonological processing skills. I also like the PAL-II, for assessing dyslexia/dysgraphia.

Both the WIAT and the KTEA have measures of reading and calculating fluency, though the KTEA has more finely-graded reading fluency tasks for word recognition, decoding, and silent passage reading. The WIAT has gross measures of single word reading fluency for word recognition and decoding (results in quartiles), and an oral reading fluency measure that includes speed, accuracy, and their combination.

For a mathy child, the WISC-V is significantly better than the -IV, in my opinion, especially if a few additional subtests are given (especially Arithmetic, which allows for the ancillary quantitative reasoning QRI to be calculated). If some other phonological or auditory working memory measure is not administered (such as in the CTOPP or WRAML-2), I would also want an additional working memory subtest (Letter-Number Sequencing) to be administered, in order to obtain the auditory working memory index (another ancillary composite AWMI).

Alternatively, you could pursue an evaluation that is based on the WJ system, with co-normed cognitive, oral language, and achievement measures. You would still need supplementary phonological processing, as the WJIV PP tasks are as limited as the WISC/WIAT/KTEA measures. (I.e., sensitive enough to pick up substantial deficits, but not necessarily subtle ones.) The WJ can include the skills, application, and fluency measures that would likely be important for your situation.

For any of these assessment instruments, providing your evaluator with a thorough history and description of your concerns will be essential, as that is the primary determinant of the components of the assessment that they will select. I am not offended by parents naming specific instruments (though I can't speak for other professionals); you should feel free to bring up any suggestions or rumors you've heard from random posters on the internet.

Wow - thank you so much platypus and aeh!! I really appreciate it. This is fantastic!!

Does the WISC V have extended norms? DS had to use the extended norms on the IV and that was very useful. Do you see any "harm" in giving her the IV (if the V doesn't have the extended norms)? Will the IV catch her math gifts?

The -V will have extended norms at some point. Pearson has been projecting extended norms coming out some time this year, but no word yet on a more specific timeline.

For a very mathy kid, I would give the edge to the -V over the -IV, as one of the new fluid reasoning subtests has pretty good associations with quantitative reasoning (especially of the algebraic kind). The WISC-IV PRI is very much a mixed measure, with one visual-spatial task, one nonverbal fluid reasoning, and one fluid reasoning with a fair amount of access to verbal mediation. Since she's strong in visual spatial, it may be that the WISC-IV PRI would also capture her strengths, at least in terms of numbers, even with its mixed nature. As a rule of thumb, though, it's still preferred to use the most recent norms (and the -V has now been out for over a year and half). As long as the examiner follows standardized administration procedures, a WISC-V administration given now will have the option of re-interpretation with the extended norms in the future.