Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What the heck?!?...WIAT-III results back.....

Hello all! Sorry this is kind of long but I'm getting worried and I desperately need your wisdom! Briefly...Everything going along great...Principal tells us DS will finally be subject accelerated in science and social studies...We are thrilled. Then the phone call..."First one in the district, so to be sure and have everything documented, we need to have him achievement tested as well" (The kid has already had the SBS AND the WISC(sigh) both showing highly gifted (slow processing & memory) Both psychologists stated in summary he is more than ready to handle classes three years or so ahead...Last year took the EXPLORE as a 5th grader that showed he did as well as or better than 85% of 8th graders in science and reading, which are the subjects we want him accelerated in. So get the WIAT-III scores back and I have no idea what to make of these scores. Pseudoword decoding he scored 5% (yikes!) but reading comprehension 88%, listening comprehension 95%, essay composition 87%, word reading 63% sentence composition 42%, and then spelling 13% (Spelling not surprising) Then we have the math which is really odd....math problem solving 90%, numerical operations 87% but then math fluency in addition is only 6%??? Oral reading and oral expression, which I thought would be sky high was only 63% and 47%. This is a kid who reads and comprehends college textbooks and has the most amazing vocab and oral expression! What gives??? I am completely clueless! Then there is a sheet that is titled "Differences Between Composite Standard Scores" and under "Significant Difference" there is a yes for 11 out of 21 catagories. Should I be worried??? Could these scores hurt his subject acceleration??? We have a "Team" meeting with everyone Friday and I want to be totally prepared. I know DS is underachieving but these scores seem so stange to me. Please, please help me figure it all out. I have more numbers if you need more info on anything. I sure would appreciate it! Thank you so much!!!

I'm new to all this, but if sounds as it there is a wide discrepancy between the first tests your son did, and this new set of achievement testings. Was he feeling ok the day of the test? Was he just not " into " it so to speak...there could be so many variables. I hope someone on here can guide you to more interpretation, there are many on here that are a wealth of knowledge on all these testings etc. I hope the team meeting is positive and the plans continue on as you had planned for.

I am not an expert but to me that pattern seems quite cohesive and I think you should be investigating stealth dyslexia. His comprehension is great but he can't read without context, or spell, you say his speech is great but his oral reading is average, his math reasoning is there but simple computations are problematic.

Are the results that are higher still lower than you expected? Could there also be an aspect of having a bad day, not liking the tester or feeling bad because he could tell he was being tested on lots of stuff he wasn't good at? Could his age or grade have been entered wrongly and impacted the results? I don't know anything about this actual test.

My guess, and it's only a guess. (I get my final reports next week for this years testing of my girls) I'm thinking you might be seeing the working memory and processing delays in play with his achievement. His SB and WISC are the IQ, so the potential, the WIAT is what he can show at any given time. How slow were his processing and working memory on the WISC? Does he have any trouble with handwriting? How are the composite scores overall? That would determine if they are going to present a problem with the school as well as how you approach it.

Take this with a grain of salt as I have administered WIAT-II but it's been a few years, and I have not seen WIAT-III (there may be differences I'm not aware of). My experience with WIAT was not with gifted students either, so I don't have direct experience with interpreting scores. That said, a couple of things immediately occur to me as I read your post.

The way that the reading comprehension section is structured on the WIAT, students are given certain passages based on their current grade level. To use the computer scoring, the administrator has to administer only those passages. For a highly gifted reader, I think that there would be a ceiling effect that impacts the way in which percentiles look. The student also doesn't see the question in writing, as it is presented orally.

Pseudoword is as it sounds....made up words. It looks at a students understanding of phonics. Some students are great readers but struggle with this activity because they keep trying to make what they see into real words, or because they don't rely much on phonics to approach new words in reading. This might be a student who accumulates many new words as part of reading vocabulary, but mispronounces them when they say them out loud. This would impact the word reading score as well. It doesn't impact silent reading comprehension because they are able to infer meaning (and to attach meaning to that word from then on) even if they are unaware that they don't actually know how to pronounce it.

Math fluency: this is timed. Student works through as many problems as possible in a limited amount of time, no skips allowed. You mentioned slow processing in WISC and SBS, so I wouldn't a high score here. The more relevant score is the problem solving score which measures general content and is not timed.

Essay composition is scored subjectively and score reflects grammatical and punctuation errors, as well as spelling errors (and unless they've come up with a better prompt in version III, the prompt is bo-ring.

Oral expression is also somewhat subjective. One task is fluency (name as many.....in one minute as you can).

Personally, I don't see the connection between WIAT and science and social studies curriculum. If you have a child who chooses to read college textbooks in these subjects and who demonstrates comprehension of those textbooks, that is surely more relevant. Maybe an accommodation or agreement that he will type new vocabulary into an online dictionary as homework (so that he can hear the pronunciation of the word) could address any concerns about word reading/pseudoword.

Hello Triplejmom, mumofthree, melmichigan, and Taminy Thank you so very much for responding! Thanks to mumofthree, I have been frantically searching the internet on stealth dyslexia... Seriously though, thank you for bringing that up. I would never have thought of that and it was/could be certainly something to look into. After reading about it he does have a few stealth characteristics, but I attribute it more to his lovely ENFP personality. He has absolutely beautiful handwriting, has never had problems with the alphabet/sounds, no motor coordination problems, never confuses L/R, great in reading comp, great in written output for essays, his oral reading choices do match his verbal and cognitive ability...Dyslexia does run in the family though, so I guess I wouldn't necessarily rule it out totally. He seemed to like the tester, wasn't tired or sick...After meeting the school's expert in "testing" though, I was a little apprehensive. I mentioined the EXPLORE and she had no idea what it was. After speaking with her more, I found out she's a special ed teacher and teaches summer school....No experience with gifted kids and I got the feeling that she wasn't very experienced with the WIAT-III either. The school had just switched from the WJ but according to Mr. Principal, she's "certified" to administer it LOL Oh well, some of the scores just seem so off to me. I agree that a science and social studies acceleration shouldn't be a problem. Listening comprehension, essay composition, and reading comprehension were all equiv to over 12th grade and I'm just asking to go from 6th grade to 7th grade acceleration haha Maybe I should ask for higher???

Taminy, thank you for all of the information! Truly appreciated Question for you or anyone else that may know...Next to reading comprehension it says 39* >12.9 grade equiv >19:11 age equiv... What does that star 39 mean? Also, on the front page under subtest "Oral Reading Fluency" it says percetile of 47% but then on another page under "Oral Word Flunecy" he has a percentile of 98%...Why such a big difference? Should I also be concerned about the 11 out of 21 checked yes to the "significant difference" column ??? What exactly does that mean? Ugh.....I have a headache

Oh great...Husband just informed me that the tester told him this was her first time administering the WIAT...Hmmmm Also, found out that someone else inputed the scores and that she would be at the "team meeting" to answer any questions about the test. Why would this random score-inputter lady be there and not the actual woman who met and administered my son the test??? I find that odd. Anyone else???

I'm not sure about the symbols or most of the interpretive terms--it's been too long since I've administered or scored a WIAT.

A caution about grade equivalent scores though: they don't equate to grade level ability. I always have difficulty communicating this one, but here's a link and a quote that might help

"What the grade equivalent score actually measures is how typical students at the grade level specified would perform on the test that has been given. In other words, the grade equivalent of 10.4 does not indicate that the 4th grade is doing of doing 10th grade work. Rather, it indicates that the 4th grade student has performed as well as a typical 10th grade student would have performed on the 4th grade test. If the student is performing on grade level, that is a 4th grade student taking the test in the 10th month of 4th grade receives a score of 4.10, then it simply indicates that he/she is performing right at the average for other 4th graders in the norming sample, which is the 50th percentile and 50th NCE."

link for quote

I wouldn't worry too much about it being the tester's first time with WIAT if she has administered WJ before. The general administration techniques are the same. Scoring the writing and the oral expression would be new, but otherwise I wouldn't expect much impact. The unknown for me is how appropriate the test is for gifted students at this age. If Dottie were around, she could probably address that....{sigh}.

Perhaps go into the meeting with an eye to discussing whether the test has anything to offer in terms of suggesting accommodations that might be helpful, but not as if it is a determination about whether or not acceleration is appropriate. Presumably all of the determining factors that led to the decision are still in place. You might gently remind the rest of the team of that if they get too stuck on this one test. Good luck--I know going into these meetings is always nerve-wracking

Thank you!!!