Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Key Math vs. WIAT-II Math scores

I know this is probably a long shot but has anybody had their child tested/evaluated with both the Key Math and WIAT? And if so was there much of a difference between percentiles in performance?

My oldest dd was evaluated several years ago with the WIAT (looking at math percentiles only) and recently with Key Math and her percentiles went down 25 percentile points. Now I'm left wondering if she is not progressing or if it's just a difference in tests.

Thanks!

If she was way ahead before, and hasn't been in a challenging placement in school, it wouldn't surprise me that she's dropping down percentiles.

My DD took KeyMath3 at the end of 2nd to evaluate for a subject acceleration. She took the WIAT this winter, 2 years later after doing the acceleration and a subsequent compaction.

Her WIAT scores were about 25 points higher (maybe higher as there were ceilings hit on both tests) but I interpret that as largely reflecting more exposure.

I really liked the report from the KeyMath as it gave a lot of information on exactly where her holes were.

The problem is she has dyslexia and I'm now starting to think she has dyscalculia as well and is declining in her math achievement. I'm just curious if it's even possible to compare the WIAT and Key Math for achievement purposes. We are having an IEP meeting next week and I'm going to try to push them to retest her again on the WIAT for a clearer picture of where she stands.

I honestly felt that KeyMath gave us a better idea of what DD knew and could do. It's more detailed through breaking out arithmetic, operations, algebra, measurement, etc. Much of that is lumped into either math fluency (where speed matters, not reflected on KeyMath) or spread across Math Problem Solving or Numerical Operations.

I'm not familiar with Key Math and I only know about the WIAT from reading about it (our district uses WJ-III)... but for instance, if I was going into this meeting with your concerns in my district (how's that for a stretch lol!)... I would want something more comprehensive and detailed and correlated with math curriculum as data to understand what the full picture was re my dd's math achievement over time - so I wonder if in your case, requesting another Key Math test might be a better way to go than looking at the WIAT again? Just a thought... from a person who knows very little about one and nothing about the other... so take that thought for what it's worth

FWIW we're in a similar situation with our ds re reading, and we can show a decline in his percentile on reading achievement tests over time (WJ-III), but it's also sometimes difficult to pull out whether or not the scores on the achievement tests are reflecting a "new" disability or falsely lowered by his known disability... and I wonder if you may be running into that challenge too since your dd is dyslexic? It will probably help at the IEP meeting to also bring in very specific examples of her schoolwork which illustrate your concerns.

polarbear