Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Mismatch IQ/Achievement

I have been reading pages and pages of old posts and various links provided (thanks, all you posters!). And all of it has prompted this question: Am I correct in concluding that a BIG discrepancy between IQ and achievement (and I mean grades), almost ALWAYS indicates a LD? I am going to post DD9 WIPPSI scores.

Verbal IQ 135
Processing Speed 122
Performance IQ 144
FSIQ 143

Her grades for 4th grade in reading, spelling, and math are all in the C- range. B in science. A+ in art, religion, computers.

She is undergoing full psycho assessment next week to rule out dyslexia, etc. (I think she is dyslexic).

I know a lot of you have already been thru testing process. Looking at her IQ score vs. grades, what are your thoughts about the likelihood of a LD? She has no social or health issues.

Unless the WPPSI was a major overestimation of her ability, I'd tend to think that a LD is a very strong possibility.

But I have read that an IQ test can't really overestimate ability, but it may underestimate?

Does a full-amount of effort seem to be there? I've had several students over the years with high IQs and plenty of potential, but they would just zip through homework and class assignments with little attention to directions or details. Their grades would often suffer as a result. They were absolutely capable of doing the work at an A-level and they understood the concepts, but they were underachievers. However, if you feel like she's honestly putting forth effort and simply not understanding or not able to communicate her understandings to others on her assignments and assessments, some type of learning disability is certainly possible.

Now, depending on which state you live in (if you're in the USA), she may or may not meet the definition of a student with a learning disability. Several states have used IDEA 2004 to completely get rid of the discrepancy definition when it comes to learning disabilities, so if a student has a high IQ and manages to perform relatively close to "grade level" (again, regardless of ability), he/she may NOT be eligible for an SLD identification. Just something you may want to research and be prepared to deal with.

I know that some here hold that opinion, but it is not universally held. I have one kid with two WISC-IV scores: one PG and one MG. While I do think that the lower one is probably an underestimate (she had scores all over the place that averaged out to MG and she is 2e), if I'm being honest, I'd have to say that I'm not sure that the first one isn't a bit too high. I say this as a preface that I'm coming from the spot of someone who may have seen this in her own family.

An example of an overestimate (and it is probably more common in younger kids):

The vocab test asks a young kid to define a word like "therapist." This kid's parent happens to be a physical therapist. One correct answer on a "hard" word like that boosts your score by a lot more than getting one hard word right would for an older kid.

Another example:

Child A lives in an enriched environment (parents read to him a lot, attends preschool, goes to museums, etc.). His knowledge base and vocabulary and all of the parts of the IQ test that don't rely on pattern recognition (generally more of the verbal subtests fall into this area) are going to be higher than Child B who watches a lot of TV and doesn't get read to. Whether Child A is actually more intelligent than Child B, maybe, maybe not.

This second example explains why adoption studies of IQ generally show that adopted children tend to test more closely to their adoptive families on IQ measures in childhood and then regress (or go up) to numbers more similar to their birth families in adulthood. A good adoptive environment can inflate (or a poor one deflate) scores artificially especially in early childhood.

That all said, I was responding very quickly before as I was running out the door. If I had to just guess, given how high your dd's scores were on the WPPSI, I'd say that she is some level of gifted. Whether it is as gifted as those scores indicate, maybe, maybe not again. She might be more able for all we know!

However, given her school performance, my guess would be one of the following:

She is more MG than HG+ and has a learning disability

She is HG+ (like her prior scores indicate) and has a rather severe learning disability.

For comparison, my 2e kid I mentioned above, probably has an IQ right around where your dd tested (if I'm averaging the two scores and pushing it a little closer to the higher one due to variation in the scores on the second testing which still had some 19s). She is very young for grade having been started a little early (we snuck around a cut off that she missed by just under two weeks). She has inattentive type ADD and maybe dyslexia. She is, none the less, a mostly A student and is subject accelerating in math.

Where I see the major impact is wildly divergent test scores and group achievement test scores that wind up making her look like a major flake or lowering her overall grade to a B rather than an A at times. That's wherein I'd say that your dd likely has a much larger problem with a LD than does mine (more severe) should their IQ scores be fairly similar, which they well may.

I have attended and led more eligibility meetings to determine if a student has a disability than I even want to think about. There isn't any "almost always" to it. Grades would be one factor among many that would be used to determine if a student has a learning disability.

Considerably more weight is usually given to formal academic achievement testing than to classroom grades in those discussions. I used to give the WIAT-II in a quiet room, one-on-one. The test was designed in such a way that most of the questions were on what I call the Goldilocks Level: not too difficult, not too easy, just right. Students very often performed much better on that test than they did in the classroom.

A statistically significant discrepancy in scores between two norm-referenced tests (the cognitive or IQ test and one or more areas of the academic assessment) would be a major factor in that decision. It was not the only factor. If there was no discrepancy, we would look at information from several sources to determine if there were an unexpected lack of progress or failure to respond to intervention. Honestly, that "back-door" option is often used to get someone into Special Education whose IQ is between average and mentally retarded, and it shouldn't be used that way. Special Education will not raise their IQ, only lower their expectations.

There are many, many causes for underachievement in school for gifted kids. It may be that your child recognizes--whether or not she can articulate it--the mismatch between her abilities and what she is being asked to do in the classroom. Adults complain about jumping through hoops at work, but kids hate it just as much.

Gifted kids with poor organization, planning, and executive functioning (and I am speaking from personal experience here) may never be challenged to develop those skills. When a big project comes along, they may be completely unprepared to plan and execute the project.

Gifted kids often try to keep a lid on their abilities in order to fit in. I used to count to three when the teacher asked a question, to give everybody else a fair chance. The teachers may have thought I just had a slow processing speed. I saw no point in getting good grades, because it would just make me stick out that much more. Gifted minorities often underachieve because they have a notion in their head that to do well in school is "acting white".

Girls sometimes hit a rough patch around puberty where their self-esteem and grades just tank. It might be for a few months, unless it becomes a permanent feature of how they think about themselves (I'm stupid!).

I could go on, but...

Beckee's post did make me realize that I could be jumping to conclusions b/c academic failure to thrive isn't only caused by LDs. On the other hand, some of what the OP posted in her other thread does sound highly suspicious for a LD, especially in a gifted child,

Bella, it looks like your dd's IQ test was given when she was young (since it was the WPPSI). I am not an expert on the WPPSI but I do have a dd who took the WPPSI at 5 and is now 10 and has been tested again (twice), once with the WISC at 7 and again with the WJ-III Test of Cognitive Abilities. Her WPPSI scores were clearly gifted, her later scores were not (but were consistent with each other). Her later IQ tests also seem more in line with her achievement in school. I am not sure I'll ever know the real answer, but looking back, I have a hunch her WPPSI scores were in fact inflated.

Re ability vs achievement, most of us who have 2e kids (I have two) are referring to the formal academic achievement testing that Beckee mentions in her post (my school district uses the WJ-III achievement tests for the IEP eligibility process, combined with WJ-III Cognitive). Grades are included in the data that is considered, but they don't seem to carry much weight. There are so many factors that can influence grades that may have nothing to do with how much a child really knows, plus grades are somewhat subjective - there's no way to look at a "C" in one classroom for one student and be able to say how it compares to all kids who are the same age/grade and have the same ability level in classrooms across the country. Those of us with 2e kids have also usually seen signs outside of just grades that there was something up with our kids - refusal to do schoolwork, complaining about the schoolwork, lagging behind in developing skills outside of school, dramatically uneven performance in the classroom, behavior challenges etc.

I do think grades can be a huge red flag, so I think it's a good thing your dd is going through an assessment to see if there is an issue. I am sure ability vs achievement testing will be part of the assessment.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - to add one more thing about achievement vs ability testing. Our ds12 (developmental coordination disorder, dysgraphia, possibly stealth dyslexia, expressive language disorder) has large discrepancies on his neuropsych and school-IEP-eligibility ability vs achievement tests... but he does extremely well in school in all areas except the written expression, and even there he is now usually getting As. In spite of his high grades in school he has large dips in achievement vs ability - but those dips are not necessarily straight-forward. They are related to the impact of dysgraphia on the subtests - he scores well on tests that require an oral response and aren't timed, and poorly on subtests that are timed and/or require a handwritten response. The low scores aren't related at all to his knowledge, but instead reflect the impact of his disability - but a person who knows nothing about dysgraphia or the how each subtest is administered might look at them and think, hey, this kid can't do math. It may seem complicated, but the uniqueness of each subtest (on both achievement tests of this type and ability tests) is actually really helpful in understanding whether or not a child has an LD, and what the LD might possibly be. Neuropsychologists will typically follow up with more skill-specific testing to more clearly define the LD if one is suspected based on ability vs achievement gaps.

pps - do you have subtest scores from the WPPSI? While it's lower than the other scores, the processing scores is still quite high... I'm curious if the subtest scores in the different categories are relatively consistent or if there are any huge swings that averaged out to the #s you have.

polarbear

Oops... I kinda forgot about this part of your post when posting my response. I agree with Cricket, these are clear red flags for a potential LD. My ds with dysgraphia has the same challenges, as well as my HG dd who has a relative weakness in associative memory. We thought dd was dyslexic until she had her educational testing (which included ability vs achievement as well as dyslexia screening).

Best wishes,

polarbear