Four years ago, my older daughter was identified as gifted at age 6 after her school psychologist administered the WISC IV; she scored a FSIQ of 138 and a GAI of 142 (which were higher with extended norms). She has always been a high achiever, reaching all milestones early, so her scores were not necessarily a surprise.
Her younger sister on the other hand, has always seemed more "normal", (7 year old, 2nd grade) with grade level reading, math etc., but very perceptive and mature, with a wicked sense of humor and a good vocabulary. She was recently given the OLSAT at her elementary school, and scored substantially lower (SAI of only 98). While I don't believe my younger one is gifted, I still thought her results would indicate that she is "bright", rather than average, to below average. It just seems very odd that there would be such a discrepancy between siblings (almost 3 standard deviations!!)
Has anyone had a child that scores substantially lower on the OLSAT than on an individually administered test like the WISC-IV? just wondering if I should accept these scores as a valid reflection of my 7 year old's abilities?
Guess I'll throw out my thoughts/experiences -
First I should say, I know nothing about the OLSAT (both DD7 & DD9 were given the KABC-II and Kaufman Achievement tests)and I don't know if you can really compare the OLSAT with the WISC when it comes to your daughters and their scores. I don't think I'd accept those scores and would want to see how she scored on the WISC just to have apples to apples. Believe me the ones who seem "normal" can surprise you, as we have recently found out.
Our older DD had issues in 1st grade with her behaviors at school - long story short - we had her tested to rule some things out and were surprised to find out she was gifted. We knew she was smart, but didn't realize just how smart. Now this DD of ours is not a people pleaser and marches to her own tune. She doesn't really care about grades or tests and likes to give silly answers to see if anyone will catch it. We warned the tester of this and I know she at least answered some questions with off the wall answers because she told us about it, so it is quite possible her IQ is actually higher than her test results indicate.
Then there is our younger DD. We recently had her tested and received her testing results. Just like your younger child - she seems more "normal" to us than DD9. We debated whether to test or not, but she was showing some signs of dysgraphia or dyslexia and we wanted to make sure we were doing what we needed to do for her. We also felt it wasn't fair to not have her tested since her sister was tested, but that was just our feelings on the matter.
I will honestly tell you that we were just hoping for at least an IQ high enough so she could qualify for the gifted program at school and we wouldn't have to deal with "how come sister gets to do this and I don't". I have read about sibling IQ's typically being within 10 points, so if she happened to be 10 points below DD9 she might be cutting it close. My DH and I talked about all the "what ifs" - what if she does have dysgraphia/dyslexia? What if she misses the cut off for the gifted program, then what will we do and how will that affect her? She is so different from our older DD, that I really didn't know if she would qualify. She is a total pleaser at school and her behavior at school is great (at home, eh, not so much). She is much more social than DD9 and has a lot of friends. Well, guess what - her IQ is about 20 points higher than DD9's and she hit ceilings on some subtests, so we don't really know how high she could have gone. They did not think she has either dysgraphia or dyslexia (I still think there is something, but not sure exactly what it is). I literally broke down in the tester's office because I was so shocked. I had so many things going through my head wondering how I could not have known after all the research and reading I've done since DD9 was tested 3 years ago. I just kept thinking - but she is so social, how can that be? Now I just assume one of her greatest areas of giftedness is socialization.
It wouldn't do any harm to have your DD7 tested using the WISC, other than maybe the cost to have her tested. She might surprise you!
