Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional 2E kids and challenges with achievement tests

I'm curious if there are other 2E kids who are challenged by showing what they know on achievement tests? I'd really like for my ds to take one of the talent search tests but am not sure he'd perform up to the level of his true knowledge on them. He's had a lot of trouble with showing his knowledge on the tests he's had to take in the past. The types of problems he has include:

1) Sign confusion - he'll read a math problem and just completely miss what sign is attached to a number - in both directions! He'll miss a - sign, but also sometimes read a + as a -. As long as he's got the sign correct, he's got the calculation correct.

2) Copying challenges - he has an accommodation for school and state testing to write all his answers in the test booklet, but when he's using scratch paper for math he makes copy errors going back and forth between computer screen to record an answer, things like that in his homework... so I'm guessing he'd have the same challenge on a test given on a computer.

3) Doing what he's told, as opposed to remembering what his test accommodations are lol! On his TerraNova math test in school last spring he used the bubble sheet for answering even though he has the accommodation to write his answers in the test booklet - he used it because the proctor gave it to him and the other kids were using it. He *knows* he's supposed to write in the answer book, but a proctor not reminding him and handing him the bubble sheet meant, to him, he was supposed to use the bubble sheet. And... he got off by one line on the bubble answers and came out of the test with a ton of incorrect answers - ack!

Soooo... I guess I have test anxiety. DH thinks we need to have him take some of these tests just to practice taking standardized tests before it's time that he really really needs to take high stakes testing. DS wants to take some too - he's interested in taking some of the courses offered through the talent search programs. He's got the IQ scores to qualify (given on multiple occasions lol).

Is there any hope for him? Hope for either testing well in spite of his disability... or hope for him having a mother with test anxiety?

polarbear

ps - he's totally a math-science kid. He's probably more likely to qualify in a reading/verbal type achievement test, but totally not interested in language arts. Plus he really doesn't read all that much, and as he gets older I'm guessing his reading/verbal achievement test scores may go down in percentile due to that... but again... that's probably *my* test anxiety!

If you want a talent search test to try out, is he the right age / grade to do SCAT? It's short, has no bubbling / copying, and the math seemed to me to have less emphasis on computation and more on number sense.

Thanks AlexsMom - he's still young enough to take the SCAT - so that's probably a good one to start with! It's good to know the math has less emphasis on computation - he's great with number sense

And short will be good too - less stress.

polarbear

Been there, done that.

If you have current documentation of his disabilities, send it in to the testing companies ahead of time to get him approved for accommodations. Having the right accommodations in place made a huge difference in my son's ability to show what he knew on the math and writing sections of the SAT.

ETA: If you have supporting documentation, you can ask for small group/private testing, which should take care of the "all the other kids are doing..." stuff.

Aculady, if a child has small group/private testing in his IEP, will testing companies typically honor that?

I had assumed that was too "boutique" an accommodation for them to take seriously...

DeeDee

They honored it for us. I can't speak to how often they do this, but it was one of the standard "check here if you need this accommodation" boxes, not a "write in accommodation not listed here" and we had it listed as a needed accommodation in a psychologist's report.

Thank you for the link aculady! I'll take a look through it today

DS does have a current neuropscych eval as well as a current IEP with accommodations, so he's heavily documented lol. Ironically he was in a small group testing situation at school when the bubble sheet test happened - but he was the only student who had an accommodation to write answers in his test booklet, and the proctor simply forgot to not hand him a bubble sheet when she was passing out the test. When she realized that she'd accidentally given it to him, he'd already started to use it, so she decided he must not really need the accommodation and didn't say anything to him. The school actually tried to use this as an argument to remove the accommodation from his IEP, until we pointed out what had happened with his test scores when he used it!

We did get accommodations on the SAT, although we didn't get everything we asked for. We didn't have recent enough documentation on his vision issues for them to allow a large print test book, but the recent psychologist's report plus his OT history and the history of using similar accommodations throughout his education was enough for them to approve extended time for writing and math, extra breaks, small group/private testing, keyboard for the writing section, and a large block answer sheet.

We just followed the instructions for students with disabilities seeking accommodations. Since we homeschool, we had to apply directly instead of going through the school.