Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment When to test?

I have a 5 year old daughter who will turn 6 in March. She is currently in kindergarten and testing above grade level in reading and math. I'd like to have her tested for acceleration and possible placement in the gifted class. Should I hold off on the IQ test until she is 6? Would it make a difference whether she takes the SB-5 or WPPSI-III at age 5; or takes the WISC-IV as a newly turned 6 year old?

I am no expert, so you'll want other input too. However, my DD6 was tested in the WPPSI 1.5 years ago, and then we had her tested with the WISC right after she turned six (hoping to get her into am amazing gifted school). The benefit of the WISC is that you can calculate GAI (I don't think WPPSI or SB-5 have that capability). If your school will accept GAI, it can be a lot higher than FSIQ scores for these highly gifted kids.

So for me, it was definitely worth testing her again as a 6-year old on the WISC because her 139 FSIQ WPPSI score missed the application requirement by 1 point, but her 144 GAI WISC score surpassed it. Since you can't test them more than once/year, I might wait till March if I were in your shoes. Again, I am no expert, so please wait to hear from others on the forum.

My ds will be 6 at the end of this month. We have been waiting until he is 6 to have him take the WISC. The problem with the WPPSII is they can hit the ceilings

My DS7 took the WPPSI at 5 and the WISC at 6 and 8 months. The WISC provides more information and having GAI as well as extended norms helps at ceiling levels for a better picture.

From what I have read the SBV is a more abstract reasoning test and if the child's strength is verbal they might not do as well as on the WISC. If the child's strength is abstract reasoning then the SBV may better suit their strength.

For DS7 the WISC showed his strengths verbal and perceptual (abstract) and also showed his weakness (working memory and processing speed).

We tested our DD on the WPPSI at 4yrs9mths and had multiple ceiling issues, we then tested at 5yrs2mths with the SB5 and her FSIQ was 8 points higher. To my mind the three big reasons were

a) gifted specialist tester who had far better rapport with her
b) test fatigue on the WPPSI, even on the SB5 I could hear she was getting tetchy at the end and it took half the time.
c) ceiling issues on the WPPSI, she hit one hard and multiple soft ceilings on the WPPSI, but her highest scores were 17s, sometimes due to scaling (she was too old to score better than 17 on one subtest) and partly due to getting lots of 1 out of 2 scores because she didn't like talking to the tester.

I personally would not recommend the WPPSI as a tool to identify a gifted 5+yr old. The risk of needing to retest them very soon is too high.

Thank you for the replies. I will wait until she is 6 to test.

Unless you need the IQ test for acceleration, I would wait until at least 6 if not later. There seem to be a somewhat dismissive attitude among certain edeucation professionals regarding high IQ scores attained at a young age. I think it may be partly due to the huge variations they see among children in Kindergarten and first grade, much of which are not necessarily tied to intelligence. Furthermore, if you are trying to grade-skip or subject accelerate her, achievements scores would be far more persuasive.