Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Any tips for SB-V test prep and a nervous mom?

I was paraphrasing Dr. Ruf�s comments given during the first of her four scheduled sessions as I understood her.

I do think IQ testing is important for educational decisions, but as CFK mentioned, less important as the child progresses in school. In this area, the public schools only accept there own group tests and our Catholic school educators don�t acknowledge that any kid is gifted, or assert that they all are, depending on the year. So IQ scores are less important here than they may be elsewhere.

My son has been tested three times, including the WPPSI, SB-IV, and SB-V. He has never scored below the gifted threshold, but did considerable better with the PhD who took a developmental history, than with the other testers who did not. I certainly believe a child will perform better with someone they enjoy and after a good night�s sleep and healthy meal.

Hi CFK,
I find this idea very attractive. Can you flesh it out a little more. I'm gearing up to sign my DS11 up for the SATs this year or next. When he took the SCAT in 3rd, he scored over a standard deviation above the other gifted kids, which meant nothing to the school, but at least assured me that we were in the Young Scholar Program ballpark. How specifically do you use the above level test results to plan High School?
Thanks -
Trinity

Hi all! Thanks for all the support and help.

We're back...and we don't know a whole lot more than we did before the test.

It turns out that despite DS's unbelievable pattern-identifying ability, he's apparently not really a visual-spatial learner. (So, I guess we did learn THAT from the test! But I don't think that bit of knowledge was worth the testing fee. LOL!) DS had significant trouble with one part of the SB-V that our tester--who is a top expert in GT testing--said tends to trip up non-VS kids. DS just couldn't see the forest for the trees, so the score in that subtest was lower (probably significantly lower, according to the tester) than would be accurate for DS.

Furthermore, the tester thought that having this trouble so early in the test threw DS off his game from then on. These factors, combined with not-PG-level scores on both memory subtests meant that the total test score was nearly 2 full standard deviations below his achievement test scores. The tester said he's confident that DS is "definitely" HG (he tested as such, bad subtest score and all), is probably EG (as he scores if you drop the one bad subtest score), and is possibly PG...but the SB-V wasn't the one to show it. The tester then recommended that we re-test in 2-6 months with the WISC and see if that suits DS better.

Oh, and without sounding like I'm making excuses, DS couldn't go to sleep until 2 hours past his normal bedtime and had to get up an hour before his usual waking time, and he was on the verge of a fever that manifested 36 hours after the test. So all-in-all, Tuesday was not a great test day for DS!

Still, I'm loathe to chase a number, so we're debating about whether or not to bother testing again. I'd love some advice. Here's our thinking:

The one really vital piece of info we got was that unless we grade skip (or else require 4-6 special accomodations that the school wouldn't want to do), the tester felt that public school probably won't work for DS. (We concur.) Since the biggest benefit to our particular DS that public school has over the homeschooling is participation in sports, grade acceleration isn't something we're excited about. (Though I am a big believer that it's a great solution in many situations...) So public school is probably out for now, barring some ingenious solution we (and our not-remotely-creative school system!) have yet to think of, though we're not ruling out sending him for high school. We have much time before we have to worry about that!

The other educational option for us now besides homeschooling would be one of the private gifted academies in town, but they are prohibitively expensive. If we're going to go that route, we'd probably have to have the test scores to get him into YSP so that we might have the chance for some tuition help.

So here's the $64,000 question: do we have him take the WISC and keep our fingers crossed that he gets the 145, or keep homeschooling as we're doing now, and not bother to re-test? I'm not sure it's worth the hassle, cost, etc. to find out for sure if he's PG, particularly if we're going to continue to homeschool. Those of you in YSP: is it worth our while to chase the score that would get DS into YSP if we're not 100% sure that he's PG? Any help would be appreciated!

So, to summarize: We still don't know if he's elegible for YSP or not. We still don't know if he's level 3, 4 or 5 gifted. We still don't really have enough info to decide what educational path to take for next year. And now we have a new decision to make: re-test or no?

You called it, Trinity! Apparently my expectations were, indeed, too high. I was REALLY hoping to get SOME sort of useful info out of this test! But no, 'twas not to be.

*sigh*

((pout))
Sorry about no clean answer K...it's great when it does happen.
As for the expensive private school - all of them do have financial aid packages, and it's questionable that YSP's financial aid would be more generous that that.

I would seriously looking the various schooling options, so that at least you "know" what's availible. Homeschooling has lots of advantages, but bricks and mortar schools have more to offer than athletics. Just spend time sittling in the public school class your child could be gradeskipped into, and the private schools. Then you will be homeschooling because you love it, not because you didn't look behind the curtian. (My Humble Opinion - LOL)

The good news is that your child is solidly Level III or more. I would certianly fill out paperwork for Davidson's YSP - it's not a sure thing, but worth a try. You know that unaccomidated regular school isn't worth trying - that's a lot of sanity right there. Ruf talks about the differences between Level III, IV and V being very dependent on environment and personality, and quite fluid for some children. Other children are talking and reading at 6 months of age, and well, there is less mystery about certian questions, such as school.

Did your tester have any ideas about the WISC or YSP elegibility? I would drop him an email about it.

Best Wishes,
Trinity

Thanks for the advice, all! I'm not sure what the policy on responding to messages is, but I'm doing a one-by-one response here in one message. I hope that's okay. I certainly don't want to offend people who are offering such GREAT help to me!
*****

Dottie: The doc told me DS's scores, but we don't have the written report yet. With the low subtest (a 9/19) included, he got a 134. If we toss that one subtest, he scored 138. Not sure what the doc was basing his observations of HG/EG/PG on, now that you ask. He's the expert, and his comments didn't set off any alarm bells for me, so I just accepted what he said. (duh!) I'll ask him.

DS is very verbal. He was most consistent and high-scoring on the verbal part of the SB-V, without a doubt. Lots of 17/19s. Only the memory subtest tripped him up. I think he got a 14 there, which is probably enough to keep him out of YSP range on the verbal. But maybe that means the WISC would be more likely to show his strengths to his best advantage? Hmmm...
*****

J: You ask if things line up with my expectations. I'll repeat: I really have a hard time answering that!

If you asked me to hazard a guess 6 months ago, I'd have guessed DS was probably a vanilla gifted (just plain G or maybe MG) kid. EVERYTHING he's done, tested, demonstrated, etc. indicates that he's higher than that. The one thing I'm sure of now is that he's NOT level 2 or below!

As I understood Dr. Ruf's book, it seems that DS could be anything from level 3 to level 5. My gut says he was probably level 3-4 before homeschooling, where he now has a much greater opportunity for self-direction and the passion that flows from self-directed study. His dates on Dr. Ruf's checklist put him somewhere between a 3-5--he did most things earlier than the level 3s, and he didn't do everything that is listed as an "all level 5s do thus-and-so," so I guess I'd place my bets on level 4.

Here are the facts:
He enjoyed books and songs from birth, and held his head up to look around as soon as the epidural was out of his system. (Rough induced-from-zero birth experience!) By the time he was sitting up in his Boppy (assisted sitting), he was looking at board and cloth books with interest and indicating when we was ready to turn the pages by grunting and bouncing. He taught himself letters and numbers by working 2 puzzles (one with the alphabet and the numerals from 0-9, so 36 pieces, and one with his full name spelled out, so 18 pieces) for HOURS every day while he was about 13 months old. I told him the names for the letters and words that started with each letter just to keep ME from losing my mind with boredom! By 15 months, he knew every letter and number, even upside down and backwards, and could make most of the sounds for the letters, too. His patience was astonishing for anything he wanted to learn. Frustration was virtually never apparent...just constant, patient practice. He read his first "easy reader" book that he'd never seen before at 3y.7mo. He could identify every color in the 64-crayon box and the make and model of every car in the _Consumer Reports_ annual auto issue that he saw on the road by the time he was 2...and would correct us if we got either wrong. He could count to 10 in three languages with 1-to-1 correspondence before age 2 and say the alphabet in 3 languages then, too. By age 3 he had moved on to NASCAR (which no one in our family cares one whit about except him), and he had memorized every driver/car colors & numbers/sponsors/etc. for every car on the circuit. He was keyboarding by age 3. He sucked his thumb until age 3, when the dentist told him to stop because it was hurting his mouth; he stopped that day and never once put his thumb back in his mouth. He was writing and illustrating books of his own before age 4 (though the words weren't always legible to anyone but DS...). He grasped simple x+1 = 3 type algebra by age 4. I had a hard time pre-testing him for math for homeschooling this fall because he taught himself how to do the problems he'd never seen before as I was giving him the test.

So what does all of that mean?

There's so much overlap on dates on Dr. Ruf's lists, and I don't have anything/anyone to compare him to, so I'm just not sure. I wouldn't be surprised to find that with an appropriate learning environment--which he hasn't gotten (even from us) since he was an infant!--he might very well be a level 5. Or he might be a level 3, and I'm just reading Ruf all wrong.

I am pretty well persuaded that his achievement test scores were probably too high. I think I could have been wrong about DS by 1 standard deviation; I can't BELIEVE I could have been wrong by two! That's a whole lot of wrong! But I also think his SB-V was probably too low. He is a highly verbal kid. I'm pretty satisfied that DS's skill with patterns and puzzles just threw me (and the psychologist, BTW), and we gave him a test that didn't suit him. He's likely to test better on the WISC.

As for having a HG in public school...we are currently homeschooling, and it is the right choice for us for this year. I don't mean to say that no HG can go to public school. (Though Dr. Ruf's work would seem to indicate that a level 1 or 2 school is pretty unlikely to promote thriving for an HG or higher child, even with special adaptations...) But I agree completely with the psychologist that OUR HG+ cannot thrive in OUR school system, which does little to support gifted kids. Even with grade advancement--which would be a BIG fight to get--I'm not sure he'd do okay there. Homeschooling has been our saving grace this year!

My only hesitation with keeping up the homeschooling is really a selfish one: I'm trying to finish a novel, and I'm getting nowhere on it this year. But I think I'm coming to grips with that reality. It will just have to get done when it gets done.
*****

Trinity: I didn't know what the Davidson's policy for financial aid is, if there was a need-based component. Thanks for the help there. We're in that middle class dilemma: we almost certainly earn too much to qualify for need-based financial aid, but we don't earn enough to send DS to private school without decimating his college fund. We're not willing to do that when homeschooling is working about 90% great.

We may merely need to make some fairly minor course corrections (mainly to preserve the sanity of this introvert mom! LOL!) and keep going as we are now. There's a LOT we all like about homeschooling, and when DH and I were discussing other options for DS's education, DS jumped in with a heartfelt "I want to keep homeschooling!" argument. He's very happy.

I don't think we're simply defaulting to homeschooling. Especially in the light of the very helpful "deeper, not just faster" discussion in the calculus trap thread, I think homeschooling is probably DS's best option. If it weren't for my need for alone time and my novel, I don't think I'd have any question about it being the best option for our family.

So, in short, we're mostly doing as you suggest: covering our bases. I need evidence before I make decisions! So we're gathering it.
*****

So after reading everything you all wrote and thinking through what we need to know...I'm still on the fence about DS's taking the WISC. *sigh*

Homeschooling is certainly the most attractive option for us as far as getting a good education at a price we can afford. So any help we might get from YSP (financial and otherwise) might not be vital to us. We can afford to pay for the test...but I don't know that we need to.

I guess I have more thinking to do...

Thanks again! It's so nice to be able to walk through all this with people who GET IT and can offer such good help! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for indulging me and my babbling!

K-

Hi all,

Concerning the cost for the WISC IV; some of the larger insurance companies are taking their mental health benefits back in house and, don't faint now, PAYING for testing in full.

For one daughter we paid out of pocket for WPPSI. TWO months later when we check back in for our second daughter, BCBS was paying for ALL testing and she got the WISC IV FOR the bargain price of only $20-copay. This change was made around April or May, so it may be worth looking into. She scored in PG range; she seems somewhat similar to your son based on your description. Although, she was unusually quiet and seemed to be observing all the time. Hope this helps and good luck.

Incog

Kriston,
Did you say whether or not your son enjoyed taking the test and liked the tester? Once my son took his first individual test, he couldn't stop talking about how much fun it was and how much he wanted to do it again. Since we wanted to get more info anyway, we did the second test. But if he hadn't wanted to do it, I doubt we would have. I think that the WISC would be very unlikely to be successful unless he was on board with it.

It sounds like you have some time to decide. Since he's only 6, you could wait a year and still be well within the ceiling of the test.

Hmmm, acs...it's hard to say, really, if he liked taking the test. He mostly said he was tired. I did specifically ask, "Are you having fun?" and he said he was having fun. "I'm just tired" was his only additional comment. He certainly wasn't bubbling over or anything, but he's the sort of kid who lets you know if he's hating something, so I think it was probably at least a little fun for him. I certainly wouldn't say he was not on board with it. He's just a real matter-of-fact kind of kid.

Surprisingly, he said his favorite part of the test was the subtest that he bombed. (More evidence that he REALLY didn't get the point of that particular subtest!) By far his favorite part of the day was getting to build with the marble raceway in the doctor's waiting room, but obviously that was not part of the test...

I couldn't tell if DS liked the tester or not. Again, he seemed pretty neutral, but with him, there wouldn't be much to tell unless he either REALLY loved or REALLY hated the tester. Aside from his 1st grade teacher, I don't know that he's ever expressed an opinion about an adult, now that I think about it. He's a very logic-minded kid, so we generally talk in terms of liking/disliking people's actions, not liking/disliking people.

Last night, DH and I did discuss having DS take the WISC with a female psychologist here in town. She specializes in working with gifted kids, too, though she's not the national expert that tester #1 was. Still, we thought DS might do better with a woman. And sleeping in his own bed the night before the test appears to be a requirement...There's something else we learned from the SB-V!

It's good to know that he might not do much better on the WISC-IV. I think we've decided that we might as well give it a try because, as you say, Dottie, more info is better. Even so, if the testing conditions had been optimal the first time around, then we'd probably not bother. But DS was lacking 3 hours of sleep, bordering on sick, and taking a test not really right for his learning style...All of that leads me to believe we ought to give it one more try, just to see if there's anything else we can learn.

I'll check with the insurance company, incogneato. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks again, all!

Nope, Dottie, when I say bombed I mean BOMBED! DS got a 9 on the subtest. It was the "find what's impossible or silly" subtest, and DS got wrapped up in details and didn't really answer the questions, I guess. The tester said "He couldn't see the forest for the trees." DS is totally a detail sort of kid, very literal, so that makes sense.

On the two working memory subtests, he got a 12 and a 14 (verbal). Not bombing, but not exceptional enough for YSP either. All the other verbal subtests were 16 or higher--mostly 17s, if memory serves. He got a 19+ out of 19 on the pattern recognition subtest, maxing out the test. But unlike his consistent performance on the verbal half, his performance on the non-verbal half of the test was very uneven.

Your theory is interesting. I didn't ask DS6 if he were challenged. Hmmm...

Thanks, Dottie. But I think you misunderstand me a bit. I'm not worried or upset about DS's performance. Not even disappointed. I think he did just fine. My only wish is that we would have gotten a more definitive answer about whether he is YSP-qualified or not. He's in that gray area, and I'd just really like to KNOW something. When one of the foremost experts in testing gifted kids can't pin down your child as level 3, 4 or 5, then where does that leave you?

My attitude is this: if DS should be in YSP, then great. If he shouldn't be, well, that's great, too. I don't really know what he's missing, so I'm not stressed about it at all. It wouldn't bother me if we just shrugged the WISC off and didn't test him again. But DH figures we spent the first $750, so we might as well spend another $750 and actually get a result for our money (we hope!). If he'd had a good test day last week, then we'd be done with it. He didn't, so here we are...

And actually, I would have assumed that the one "bombed" subtest was a good read of DS if the tester hadn't said, "I saw what was going on in his head, and this was NOT a valid indicator of your DS's abilities! If I were reporting his score, I'd be very comfortable with dropping that subtest." Then the tester explained what the test was and what the problem was, and I saw what he meant. But I was/am honestly not hoping for anything in particular from DS's scores. What difference does it really make to me if he's level 3 or level 5? I just want to know what his scores are and know that they are a (mostly?) accurate reflection of his abilities, whatever those abilities are. And then I want to know what my best options for educating him are.

I just didn't want you to think that I'm some sort of stage mother, Dottie! I love DS just the way he is...I'd just like to know exactly what it is that I'm loving!