Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment How long were they in the room when they tested?

Thanks so much for this. I just e-mailed the tester, so we'll see if she says anything about it? I don't know...but at least now she knows!

I bet her scores will be great.

When my DD was testing in K we had to get off the highway, call the tester and then turn back and go home because she was throwing up like crazy, and of course not expecting this to happen and her being 5 (not 1) I didn't have a change of clothes in the diaper bag (lol!).

She was sick for a couple of days and then the second phase of that testing also had to be broken up into two more visits and it got quite spread out and chopped up. She was also having alot of problems in school, which is why we were trying to get through the testing in the first place.

Anyway she still scored really high.

Soooo, the moral of my story is, maybe your DD gave the tester her last good 1.5 hrs before falling apart, and you'll be pleasantly surprised. If not, you've communicated the issue and I'm sure the notes will be in there.

(When DD was tested in K, we were give a draft that we were asked to read and any feedback we had was incorporated for the final draft, but I don't know how common that is. The tester did misinterpret a couple of key points we provided during the intake meeting, her wording struck us like...whaaaat?...so it was a good chance to catch that).

Interesting...so sorry to hear she was sick and that the tet was delayed, etc. Kinda crazy, right!?

I just had this "feeling" it didn't go well? Not sure why? But maybe it was just me? I've always been a bit worried b/c she's shy and quiet and very much an "internal processor" that maybe she wouldn't speak up enough?? But that is one good thing about private testing. It isn't going to the school unless I want it to!

It is kinda hard though b/c she needs a 133 to get into the program -- doesn't that seem quite high for a public school program which really amounts to maybe 2-3 hours per week of being pulled out? I just can't imagine...that seems tough...even under the best of circumstances?

I don't know the background on your child but there must be things you have noticed about her or things she's done that indicate her giftedness so I would just concentrate on that for the time being and try not to think too much about the test results. Maybe in a couple of weeks you'll be posting again needing help with extended norms!!

Your doubtful feeling might just be your own stuff. Cold feet or editing your instincts, alot of us moms do that. You'll still love your DD the same when you know her number.

Scores in the range from 115-130 are sometimes referred to as "bright" and sometimes as "mildly gifted" or "moderately gifted". 130(ish) is an often used cutoff for admission to GT programs, I think partly because it is a threshold for a common score-based definition of giftedness these days, and possibly because modern GT programs often suffer from a lack of funding to serve more children. Yes, roughly 1 in 50 or less is fairly rare compared to what you'd expect to see on average in a typical public school classroom; only one child in 2-3 classrooms would qualify. Still, out of the children left behind, the idea might be (hopefully) to at least provide some form of enrichment, and for those children there's a greater chance of in-classroom strategies actually working.

There are some GT programs with very low criteria for entry (I believe Cricket2 lives in an area with such programs) and they are not without their own problems, since they may increase the chance that, by orientation to the greatest common denominator, the programs will serve highly gifted children no better than ordinary classrooms. Remember that out of any slice of the gifted population, most scores will cluster at the lower part of the range. The ideal gifted program (or program for anyone) would involve perfectly individualized instruction, which almost never happens; barring that, the next best thing for a particular gifted child could well be a program where they did not feel out of their depth, but were as close to the gateway score(s) as possible.

Lucounu -- thanks for the info! Glad to hear that this is pretty much within rage for school criteria. I thought I read (possibly here?) that many school (or at least some) schools accept a 95th percentile on the MAP tests as entrance? So, it seemed to me that would be a lower threshold?

Anyway, I guess we'll know soon enough!

Bzylzy -- Ha, ha! You've really helped me today -- while I wait -- thanks for the positive encouragement. And maybe you'll be right? We have all the evidence she's gifted, all the signs since a very young age, and very high MAP scores. She's been pulled out for gifted the past two years -- under a "phase 2 intervention" -- meaning, they are looking at her. And that is very rare especially in kindergarten. But they prefer to test in late 2nd to mid 3rd grade and we just didn't want to wait that long.

So we'll see!!!

If I recall correctly, 95th percentile or above is in the NWEA MAP documentation as being a general gifted cutoff. I've also read that some schools use it as a cutoff. I just know 130 is a pretty common cutoff too. I guess I agree with the feeling that the threshold should be lowered a bit when the GT program is not full-time, since then the gifted programming tends to assume the role of enrichment more.

Yes, our district claims to already teach a full grade level above average (don't really believe it) and to have so many bright students that they have to raise the standard. So, luckily I do believe it is a good school! And if we don't get it then we don't -- it is OK, luckily she's a good kid and very young. If we need to revisit it later we can.

Try not to worry too much about it! My guess is she did great

FWIW, our ds has been tested multiple times, and he always tests consistently at around the same level. The first time he had an IQ test it was spread over two sessions, each seemed like they were around 90 minutes. The second time he had an IQ test, I wasn't sure that I wanted to share the results from his first evaluation, so I took him in for testing and then sat in the waiting room with the envelope containing the first testing report contemplating whether or not I should give it to the neurospych who was testing him that day. After about 30 minutes, they both came out for a water break, so I decided to just give her the report so I could go run an errand and forget about it all.... (ds was supposed to be at her office all day).... I gave her the report, told her the #s... and she replied "Yep, that's right in range with what he had when I tested him this morning!"... sooooo... go figure!

Then... he had his third test a few years later through school, but we were not going to be told when he would be tested, which was frustrating for me, because I wanted to try to be sure he got a good night's sleep and had a good breakfast before testing. Instead, what happened was I took him ice skating on an early school release day, he took a hard fall, fell on his head, sliced his mouth open when he bit it during the fall, had a headache that was still raging the next morning but went to school anyway because it was during the one part of the school year where kids got to spend the full week studying a special elective class (one topic) of their choice.... and wouldn't you know it, that's when they pulled him out for testing. Not only did he have a mega-headache still... he was fuming mad because he had to miss the class he was so excited about!

He still had the same IQ profile.

Once again, go figure!

I hope your dd gets into the program!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thanks Polarbear -- this is encouraging as well. I guess it seems the test isn't quite as volatile as it might seem to be the, huh? It kind of freaks me out that it is just this one woman -- deciding this number -- and voila! That's it! Ha, ha! Even though I know that's not really it at all.

I am painting my kitchen table now. Ha!