So happy to hear that your DC is having a much better year now! Properly trained, caring staff, consistently implementing a well-thought-out and individualized plan, is how it is supposed to work. And even more delightful that he has discovered a new and creative talent.
As far as the relatively minor changes between old testing and new testing, first, remember that the reliability (score stability) is highest for top level composites, and gets progressively lower at narrower/lower levels. I.e, the FSIQ is the most stable, the Index scores are next, and subtest scores are the least stable. This dataset is consistent with that. That being said, the cognitive testing differences probably do reflect losing a couple of points to timing. His processing speed is good (High Average), and his visual-spatial problem-solving obviously is excellent, but the further up in the age norms you go, the less wiggle room there is for lost points due to timing. One of the factors that is different between the previous testing and current testing for VP and FW in particular is that he probably did not run out of items at age 7, which might have allowed him to "make up" some of the points lost to overtimes, while he very well may have run out of items at his current age before he had a chance for something similar. It isn't clear if those subtests discontinued prematurely because of his uncredited correct responses, or if the subtest just ran out of headroom, but I would suspect that it's the latter, given his resulting scaled scores. You're still looking at scaled scores in the Extremely High range, after all. And as to that 10th item comment? It does mean something to me, but I wouldn't expect it to ring any bells for anyone outside the field! Let's just say that 20 seconds is extremely quick for that item, at any age.
Re: academics. Reading decoding is nearly identical. Comprehension declined somewhat, but there are fairly big differences in the nature of the text used for assessing grade 2 and grade 6 students. The grade two item set is not really passages. It's no more than a few sentences at a time. The grade six item set includes actual multiparagraph passages. In any case, he did right on par with his historical verbal cognition, so it doesn't raise any particular concerns for me. BTW, those percentages simply say that he got very, very few items actually incorrect, and probably didn't score even higher mainly because of insufficient elaboration.
I'm not sure exactly what measures are actually indicated by Oral Fluency, since there are two tasks with those two words in them, and only one of them has to do with reading. Oral -Reading- Fluency consists of reading passages aloud accurately and quickly. Oral -Word- Fluency is a vocabulary task, where students list as many words as they can within a time limit in response to a semantic (category) cue. The two scores you've listed are dramatically different, but I'd check first to see if they are actually the same task, before attempting any kind of hypotheses.
For writing, it's good to see that he actually is capable of generating longer, open-response text. I find more interesting, though, the clinical/qualitative information about what he struggled with on Essay Comp, as well as some hypotheses related to the differences between the TOWL spontaneous writing task and the WIAT spontaneous writing task (EC). First, the WIAT task that he refused is an opinion/argument task, which requires significant executive function skills, including idea generation (using topics supposedly of personal interest), planning/organizing (paragraph structure, supporting details, etc.) and initiation (there is a writing prompt, but it doesn't contain any of the bits you would actually need to start). If he had been provided with a graphic organizer, or had the skills to generate his own, he might have been able to capture some of his ideas in an organizational framework (that's what his personal account sounds like).
On the TOWL, in contrast, there is a visual prompt with vivid (it's in color) images and a fair amount of activity in it to spur idea generation. Some students also find it helpful as a visual organizational support, as it helps keep you anchored in the narrative theme. The written product itself is also a sequential narrative, vs the WIAT's essay. Finally, while pre-planning the essay is offered to students on the WIAT, pre-planning the story is requested (specific time provided) on the TOWL.
IOW, I think the difference in writing performance may reflect executive function challenges exposed by the different EF demands of the two spontaneous writing tasks. His sentence- and word-level writing is otherwise fairly consistent with his verbal cognition (although you can see the challenges with organization already starting to creep in on the most open-ended sentence task (sentence building)). I know that some teachers are predisposed to interpret inconsistent performance as willful, but as Ross Greene says, children will if they can. In this case, the "can" is when his EF needs are adequately scaffolded (which includes when he isn't busy expending most of his EF on having to regulate emotions or tics).
Math score changes appear to be completely explained by his refusal to attempt word problems in any setting (classroom or testing). Again, the more interesting question is why. Perhaps it has something to with the ongoing large difference between his verbal and nonverbal cognition? Math is usually his refuge from words, but word problems are the saboteur, so he rejects them. They also require EF skills to translate from words to math, and typically are limited in visual supports.
As to tics and their impact on testing: yes, they could have affected testing, since he probably had to devote some mental energy to suppressing them while testing, which left him with reduced resources for efficient problem solving and any EF needs (since he was already using EF to suppress). But clearly they didn't significantly drag down his cognitive performance, which is a testament to his extremely high cognition. Have we had discussions about CBIT before? Cognitive-behavioral-based non-pharmacological intervention for tic management.
https://tourette.org/research-medical/cbit-for-patients/https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/tourette/features/tourettesyndromeawareness.htmlSounds like the FBA was confirmatory of the interventions that had already been implemented, which is still a useful finding.
