Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment i have figured something out!!!!

SOOO, I am one of the confused with the whole scoring business - FSIQ, Percentiles, extended norms, ceilings - and on and on!
I just pulled out DS's SB report (DYS asked for it - yikes, I can kiss that goodbye!), but I am looking at the "record form" and I finally understand the scaled scores and ceilings!!
Hoping I can help if anyone else was having this problem - my burning question was - "If he had a scaled score of 19 on a subtest, is that a ceiling?"...
So now I see... there are columns for each subtest, and to the right are levels - going from level 1 to level 6.... For my kids highest score (19) he was scored in levels 1 - 5... then he got a "1" which I now understand to mean is where he was "done" - although it was NOT a ceiling!
I feel so much better about this now that it makes sense!!
Just thought I'd share!!!!

I guess the terminology is still unclear to me...

The "19" is the maximum for the subtest scaled score. I.e. -- you can't get a scaled score higher than 19, no matter how many additional questions you get right in that subtest. So whether he got "1" in level 5, or "6" in level 5 and another "6" in level 6, he gets a scaled score of 19 for that subtest. If you max out all the questions and hit the maximum raw score, meaning that you don't miss any of the questions through the end of the subtest, you still get the maximum scaled score, but you also could theoretically answer harder questions.

Which is called the "ceiling" for the subtest? Maxing out the scaled score, or finishing all the questions in the subtest? If the ceiling is going through all the questions, is there a comparable term to use to refer to having the maximum scaled score?

The long and short of it is that there are different kinds of ceilings.