Hi, I am new here. My sons are twin 8 year old boys, in 2nd grade. We requested their school to evaluate them for the gifted program based on the teacher's recommendation. WISC-IV was administered, and KTEA-3 for academic assessment in April 2015 (at the time, the boys were 7, and in 1st grade).
Twin 1 qualified with a GAI calculation of 135. Twin 2 did not qualify as his FSIQ/GAI calculation was 117/118 (which is less than the 130 +/- 5 requirement of the school district). The school psychologist observed that he was extremely anxious, and some other behaviors that are uncharacteristic of my son. The psychologist also noted - "Therefore, test results should be interpreted with some caution, as they may slightly under-represent his current cognitive functioning."
We were extremely surprised with these results, especially for Twin 2. When we requested for gifted evaluation, we were certain that Twin 2 would qualify. He has all the behavioral qualities that are typical of a gifted or highly gifted child - he is intrinsically curious, is ahead of his peers academically reading at 2.5 grade levels higher, learns rapidly, retains a lot of information, etc. We attributed the unexpected results to the fact that he was on allergy medication in April 2015, which do make him jumpy and hyper active. Along with a few other things that were going on at home (grandma passed away couple months before after an ugly battle with cancer).
Fast forward a few months, we approached a reputed private practitioner, an independent certified school psychologist. He administered the WISC-V to avoid practice effect. He warned me about the Flynn effect, and told me that the scores could be lower. I considered what he said, but we were so certain that the WISC-IV results from April were complete BS, that we went ahead with WISC-V in December.
Lo and behold, just as we thought, his scores were far superior!! His FSIQ was calculated as 132 (VC-133, VS-126, FR-123, WM-122, PS-108). The psychologist noted in his report that this was very unusual, but the previous anxiety and hyper active behaviors were completely absent when he tested him. He noted that he was "orderly, methodical and persistent". The psychologist even noted that he could have scored higher on subtests - Block Design, Coding and Matrix Reasoning, had it not been for his need for perfectionism.
We presented this new information to his school, assuming that now we can enroll both children in the gifted program (we did not enroll Twin 1 in April, because we were worried and knew that it would have a negative affect on Twin 2. We wanted to wait until we had a good idea of what would happen with Twin 2). Anyway, the school now threw a curve ball and wants to do their own academic assessment as "IQ alone cannot determine giftedness". We are very worried that the school is only using delay tactics at this point as this process could again take up to 60 days. We are also wondering if they are trying to save face, and are looking to prove that my son is not qualified for the program. I hope this is just our paranoia, but our conversations with the school counselor have made us wonder!
We have a meeting with the school to discuss our concerns.
Meanwhile, I had a couple of questions for the wonderful members of this group:
1. Does anyone have any thoughts? And help with this situation?
2. How can we calculate GAI for WISC-V? I have an email out to the second psychologist asking him for it, but he hasn't responded yet.
Thank you so much!!
PS: I have so much information to share, but I tried to be concise so the message may seem very disjointed. I can elaborate if needed.
