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    parentologyco, Smartlady60, petercgeelan, eterpstra, Valib90
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    Joined: Feb 2008
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    What if the achievement scores are higher than the cognitive scores? Would that indicate anything in particular? Is it even possible? I'm only familiar with the reverse situation (achievement lower than IQ) and the reasons seem much more obvious.

    I have ds's cognitive scores but I don't have the achievement scores and I'll be finding out tomorrow at the IEP meeting (I hate surprises). So I'm trying to come up with questions in advance even though I have no idea how it will come out. There's a slight chance that ds's achievement scores in the math area could be significantly higher than his performance on the cognitive test - even though he had a nice score in the visual section (not that I have the subtest scores for that yet either). Would it merely mean that the cogitive portion wasn't a good assessment? (I can't say that I feel it was great, but he's still very much developing. I noticed that it contains a fair amount of auditory processing, and he didn't do as badly as I thought he would with that, but still he has issues that leave something to be desired in that area.)

    thanks
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    Mia Offline
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    Ds6 took the WIAT, not the WJ, but his achievement scores were higher than his IQ scores.

    That said, he took the WPPSI at 5y5m and was really too old for it (though I don't know by how much -- if anyone can find the WPPSI technical report, let me know! I'm jealous of all the WISC information!), so his IQ score was likely at least somewhat of an underestimate.

    And since he was 5, the achievement scores may have been somewhat inflated.

    That said, his Mathematics composite and his Word Reading (we didn't get a Language composite) score were quite a bit higher than his IQ scores. Spelling was quite a bit lower than IQ, Numerical Operations a bit below IQ. Math Reasoning was about the same.

    This is what that segment reads in the report:

    Quote
    Ability-Achievement Discrepancy Analysis Predicted Method

    Ds5's scores on the WIAT-II were compared to the levels of achievement predicted for a student with his general cognitive ability, as indicated by his Full Scale IQ score of 148 on the WPPSI-III administered 11/13/2007. Significant differences between actual and predicted achievement scores are reported in this section.

    He performed particularly well on tasks involving Word Reading. Ds5 achieved a much higher score on this subtest (actual score = 160 ) than expected, based on his overall cognitive ability (predicted score = 127 ). This significant difference is highly unusual and indicates a specific strength in tasks that required him to name alphabet letters and identify and generate letter sounds and rhyming words.

    Ds5 achieved better than anticipated in mathematics. His Mathematics Composite score (150) is much higher than anticipated for a child with his general cognitive ability (predicted score = 137). The difference is significant and highly unusual, suggesting that this is an area of considerable strength for ds5.

    I don't know what it means, especially since he was so young -- for my ds, I think he just had academically inclined leanings rather than building or sports urges as a preschooler.

    Last edited by Mia; 03/18/09 04:00 PM.

    Mia
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    Thanks ladies for your thoughts, I really appreciate them.

    I had the IEP meeting this morning and got the achievement scores. Interestingly, nearly across the board the achievement scores are significantly higher than the WJ cognitive scores, more than I thought they might be. The psychologist had no real answer for why this was so. The teacher offered that ds is in a period of explosive growth, and the cognitive test was about a month ago whereas the achievement test was just last week. I guess that works with the view that indeed a test is just a snapshot in time, and I certainly agree that he's in a huge spurt of developmental growth. So I guess that's the answer for now. At least that also coincides with my theory that he's such a late bloomer that he's still blooming. It'll take a while for him to sort of "gel", before he gets it all together. I guess I have to give him at least another year before we do private testing, maybe more.

    smile


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