I know this isn't a popular view around here, but I have seen a few local kids drop dramatically after early testing. It's one of the reasons my district doesn't want to look at testing before 6 or later.
I'll add that I've seen the same thing - one with my own child. I have a dd who had early ability testing as a young 5 year old when we had taken her to see a psych for anxiety. To be honest, we were surprised at how high her scores were! She was tested again at 8 and her scores were about 20 points lower overall - and more in line with the child we know. She's still an excellent student - who might even look highly gifted to folks who are looking for that stellar straight-A kid who performs very very well in an academically challenging school setting. But she's had yet another round of IQ testing and several sets of achievement tests through school, and her later scores are what's held up, not the really high early scores.
I also know of a few families who's children tested into our local highly gifted program in kindergarten who's scores did not hold up in later testing. So I wouldn't automatically assume there was an issue with the test if scores do drop - instead I'd want to look at the overall picture - what was going on when the testing took place, is there any reason to doubt the current scores etc. I'd want to also know why the child was tested a second time - was there a concern with academic performance or worry about achievement?
And I'll second the suggestion to look into potential vision issues. Block Design and Symbol Search were the subtests that my dd who had undiagnosed double-vision totally tanked on her WISC - both depend on vision. My dd was tested by a neurospcyh, so she had an additional test that looked at vision where she also had issues. The thing is - up until that point in time where it was so clearly separated out by subtest none of us (parents, teachers, piano teacher, sports coaches etc) had any *clue* she wasn't seeing well - she'd even passed her routine eye exams with our regular eye dr with flying colors. Seeing two of everything
And she was just a child, so she had no idea the rest of us weren't seeing as many "things" as she was lol!
Best wishes,
polarbear
