Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Sibling / Stanford Achievement/ 2E??

Hi all -
Added: this post is long - sorry! I'm wondering if others have experience with Stanford Achievement Tests pointing to dyslexia/processing disorders, and if anyone knows details about what the subtests are - I get to those questions below!

My DS11 is a DYS, and it has been wonderful for him. I've wondered about DD, now 8 - she is a very different kid. But I can see how she would benefit even more than he, I think, from the school gifted offerings - she is super quiet in school, and tends to be invisible unless we work hard to prevent it. In the small gifted program she would have more opportunity to shine.

I first asked some of her teachers if she could have a possible processing disorder when she was 3 - she could not seem to learn her letters. She has a fabulous memory for events but couldn't translate that to the page. Everyone told me that she was fine, toward the middle/low end of the curve, no worries.

Now, in 2nd grade, midway through the year she'd gone from "grade level" in reading to qualifying for remediation. Her comprehension is quite good - it's the reading aloud that she struggles with, makes lots of little errors. She's improved some with the remediation, but still will not read on her own - even though she loves stories.

In fact, one of her most unique characteristics is the way she will spend HOURS in her room developing elaborate stories with minimal props – yesterday it was a handful of markers. She’ll come up with these plots and story lines and act out all the parts. It’s pretty impressive.

Yesterday we got the results of her school gifted screening. Her Otis-Lennon score was 133, which qualifies her for school; but she has to also have 95 percentile on the Stanford Achievement Tests, and she was not close. (76 percentile). (Side note – our DYS did not qualify through this screening test either – he had already had individual testing showing him in the PG range which the school accepts, but his scores were only mediocre on these tests – and actually, many of DD’s scores are higher than his were on this same test.)

She has many scores in the 80s and 90s, a few in the 70s – but then a handful of low ones that bring it all down. The most striking is spelling – 15th percentile! Others are Word Study Skills under reading in the 47th percentile, and Mathematics Procedures in the 58th percentile.

I think we will do some private testing and see what we can learn. Here are my questions for all of you experts, though. 
--I can’t find any info on those 3 tests (spelling, word study skills, mathematics procedures). I was curious if there is any similarity between them?
--Any thoughts/experience on kids with scores split on these different subtests?

Hm…I’m not sure if this should go under testing or 2E. I may post in both places, and apologize if the cross-post is not appropriate....

Thanks so much!!
Susan

Sorry, follow up question. For those of you with a dual diagnosis and not homeschooling - is your kiddo in a gifted program? I'm not sure if our school would allow that or not....

Thanks,
Susan

I'm not familiar with the Stanford Achievment Tests, but things to watch out for are whether or not the test is timed vs untamed, whether or not it requires a handwritten response or an oral response, and whether or not the prompt given is verbal or the child is required to read the question. If your child has a disability impacting reading/writing/processing speed any of those areas might cause an achievement test to not accurately reflect your child's knowledge.

And yes, gifted children with disabilities absolutely do participate in gifted programming - it's really important for most gifted kids to *not* focus solely on remediating their area of weakness but instead place them where they need to be intellectually and give them support in their challenges (remediation and accommodations). That said, we did have difficulty getting our 2e ds identified early on in elementary school because although he had qualifying ability scores, his achievement scores were inaccurate in some areas due to his disabilities prior to his diagnosis (they were still inaccurate after his diagnosis - but we knew *why* they were so low then and were able to get him accommodations that allowed him to show his knowledge during testing and in the classroom). We still focused more on helping him in his areas of challenge while he was in early - mid elementary school, which I think is what we had to do in order to help him get to the place he is at now, where he can really take advantage of his strengths in middle school (he's now subject-accelerated in an academically challenging school).

I'd recommend seeking out a full educational evaluation from a private neuropsychologist, or at the very least educational testing/screening for dyslexia. Both of my daughters struggled with reading (one was more obvious than the other) - and they both had that "flattening out" where their achievement started to lag in reading - but for very different reasons, and neither is dyslexic (one had an undetected vision challenge, the other has a challenge with associative memory).

Good luck finding answers as you go forward -

polarbear

I agree with mon and polarbear. You should look at further testing to figure out what is going on. I would look for someone who has expertise with 2e kids and can "do it all." Ask ahead of time what additional tests they plan to do to tease out the source of her reading problem. Our initial tester diagnosed her as HG with dyslexia and dysgraphia but she did minimal testing beyond the IQ and achievement tests to make these diagnoses. We ended up with two separate evals that didn't really give us a complete picture.

In response to your other question re placement in gt programs:
Our DD10 was placed in the gt program based on school administered CoGat and NNAT before we pursued private testing. She struggled in the first grade gt class so we wanted more information before making a decision to pull her from the program. We initially had her do IQ and achievement testing and then based on those tests we pursued further testing re her vision and reading. She has remained in the GT classroom with some minimal accommodations (mostly extra time). She currently reads a few years above grade level but still struggles with writing, in general, and spelling, in particular. For her, staying in the gt classroom has been a good thing mainly because our gt teachers receive a lot more training re 2e issues than traditional teachers.

http://education.pearsonassessments.com/hai/Templates/Products/ProductDetail.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRNODEGUID=%7b4DB6CC4B-D482-4DFD-A1BB-F7E2657F3EB2%7d&NRORIGINALURL=%2fHAIWEB%2fCultures%2fen-us%2fProductdetail%2ehtm%3fPid%3dSAT10C&NRCACHEHINT=NoModifyGuest&Pid=SAT10C#5

here's a link to the spelling subtest...
It seems like a lot of working memory to me, certainly good visual skills would be needed. I think private testing is the way to go. Just a hunch.