I am joining this discussion late. Has anyone mentioned that using achievement tests will keep a lot of 2E kids out of gifted programs? My son's GAI is 140 which qualified him easily where we live. His achievement scores are decidedly average.
eema, my eg ds that I mentioned above is 2e - when he is given the WJ-III Achievement his scores are all over the place (from very high to extremely low) due to his second e. That's because the tests are given *without* accommodations - and they are (here) more typically given (and I think actually designed) to show differences in specific abilities rather than broad knowledge across a specific subject. He is allowed to use accommodations for the group tests our school uses to track student achievement (note: I'm *not* talking about state testing lol!).... these tests are designed to test specific knowledge expected to be learned by the grade the test is written for, and are nationally normed tests. DS is able to take these tests *with accommodations* and he scores in the same general percentile range on them as he does on ability tests.
If a school district questions scores on tests such as the WJ-III Achievement tests given without accommodations specifically for the purpose of understanding learning strengths and challenges in a 2e child, you should be able to advocate by demonstrating how the student's "e" impacts the score. When our ds was in early elementary and we ran into this as a potential issue for gifted id, our neuropsych told us there are two versions of the WJ-III Achievement tests (a "form A" and a "form B") and that we could if we wanted to request that our ds be given the second form using accommodations to illustrate the impact of his fine motor challenge on the test results.
polarbear
