Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy pros and cons of IQ testing?

My son is doing work that is far ahead of his classmates, and has been tentatively identified as gifted (they do the "official" test in January, but everyone who knows him seems confident he will do well.) However, I have been told by multiple people that I should get his IQ tested. I'm hesitant, for a number of reasons. First, because when I was in school, my IQ was thrown in my face over and over, as an excuse for the teachers to walk away instead of helping me with something that was difficult for me. Secondly, he is doing very well so far - but what if it is just through hard work and not his IQ? Will that diminish his already vulnerable confidence and ultimately result in him NOT doing as well in school? Or if he does well, will he think he doesn't HAVE to work hard anymore? Third, how accurate are IQ tests anyway? Mine had a high number, but I never felt as "smart" as the score said I was. This could have been the usual teenage self esteem issues, but I have always wondered if I am actually any more intelligent than the average person.
On the other hand, DS8 occasionally does something that makes me think he is more talented than I give him credit for, which makes me wonder if I am doing enough to challenge and advocate for him.
Anyway, I would like to hear everyone's opinions on the pros and cons of IQ testing. Also, if I do get him tested, should I let the school do it, or take him to a child psychologist? I'm sure the school is more than capable, not to mention free. But if I do it privately, the school will not be able to use his scores to do what they did to me as a kid. Any input would be really helpful!

I see the biggest pros and cons of private testing in your situation this way:

+ You'll potentially get documentary evidence in testing you can directly use in advocacy, and no matter what will get some information that will help guide your advocacy efforts.

+ You'll potentially get information that will help to identify learning disabilities, where the earlier the identification occurs, the better.

+ You can pick a reliable tester, and decide which test will be used.

+ You don't have to wait.

+ You needn't share the results with the school if you don't want to.

- It will cost money, which might be a near-complete waste if the testing from the school in January is of high quality (assuming that IQ testing will be part of that).

- The school may not be as accepting of the results as if their own tester had been used (though you can increase your chances by ensuring that tests are used which the school finds acceptable).

- You'll have to be careful not to use the same type of test the school will want to use.

Pros and cons of testing through the school:

+ It will be free.

+ You'll potentially get evidence to help in advocacy, though the likelihood may be reduced a bit due to the chance of subpar test(s) and tester(s).

+ You'll potentially identify LDs.

+ Easier (possibly instant) buy-in by the school if the testing reveals giftedness or other needs.

- Increased resistance from the school if the testing doesn't reveal those things, and of course the school will be privy to the results no matter what.

- The tester is likely to be more familiar with testing for disabilities than for identification of giftedness, and may lack patience or the knowledge of gifted quirks that can help ensure a better result.

- You'll have to wait, entailing an extra delay of at least a semester in getting access to services, maybe longer.

- The school may use one or more suboptimal tests, e.g. the CogAT or another screening test which will give less reliable results than the WISC-IV, SB-V, et al.

There are schools in Massachusetts that do no IQ testing or other standardized testing other than the NCLB-mandated grade-level tests and which also refuse to even look at private IQ test results in the name of fairness, because not everyone can afford such testing. Parents should find out if school personnel will at least look at IQ test results, so that they will not spend $1000+ based on a false assumption. Of course, they may find the purely private benefits of a test to be worth the cost.

I'll add:

You touch on something that is a big part of why we haven't tested our DS: the dark side of the idea that an IQ test may give valuable information that adds to what everyone sees by looking at the child is that an IQ test may give misleading information that subtracts from what everyone sees by looking at the child (including by influencing what you think and how you behave in an way that is irrational). I think this is a reasonable worry, particularly as you don't seem to have a question, as such, that increases the expected benefit of testing, so the risks loom larger.

You ask, how accurate are IQ tests. As psychological tests go, remarkably, in the sense that the correlation between a person's scores when tested on two different occasions is high, as these things go - but it turns out that's not saying all that much; big test-retest differences happen at a frequency that feels like "often" to someone more used to physical sciences. More importantly, IQ scores (even if you have all of them, and even more so if you only look at the headline number) are a crude abstraction of children's needs and abilities. FSIQ may be about as good as any abstraction that takes in a child and gives out an integer could be, but that's what it is! Many other things are important to success, both in education and in life.

Explicitly:

- Risk that you test your DS, he scores lower than you expect, and you react by deprioritising thinking about whether he needs more challenge and advocacy

- Risk that you test your DS, he scores higher than you expect, and you react by raising your expectations of him in an unhealthy way (like what was done to you).

These apply both to testing privately and to letting the school test, but more strongly I think to the former, because:

Advantage of not testing privately but just letting the school do it: you will find it easier to disregard the results and do the right thing anyway if they aren't reflective of what you see, than you will if the non-reflective results come from testing you chose and paid heavily for.

Suggested exercise: browse some of the IQ test threads here, and then *write down* a guess as to what your DS would score on each of the main indices. Imagine you have tested him and he actually scores that. How do you react? Is that the right thing to do anyway? Why, or why not? Suppose the numbers were different - what difference would it make, and why?

I'm a big advocate for private testing because you are in complete control of the results. You don't even have to tell the school you're doing it. Also, you don't have to tell your son the results. See what they are first, and then decide.

Keep in mind that testing is not always 100% accurate anyway, and results can change as the child develops. Our psychologist had so much trouble with our son (7 at the time) that she confessed to us that all she was able to get out of him was a snapshot of "his current level of functioning in a one on one testing environment." She said "take it with a grain of salt" and test him again in two years. Granted our son tests as having ADHD and a language processing disorder, so your son's test results may be closer to his actual cognition. Our doc kept saying "he's a really smart boy" but she couldn't even calculate his IQ because the range between his highest and lowest scores was too large ("consistent with only 7% of the population") ...yeah. sigh. So all that $$$ and a) no IQ results and b) no accurate results. Sure it's nice to hear "he's smart" but geez...

Anyway, I don't regret doing it because I was able to use the report to get DS8 speech therapy services through the school. So there you go... a "pro."

If you are going to get the IQ testing done, make sure you use a reputable tester.

There's some variation in the quality of all psychological testing and you get what you pay for.

This is exactly why we have NOT tested DD and never plan to.

My DH's IQ was thrown in his face periodically as "you don't seem SOOOO smart to ME."

Mine was just high enough that I was something of a freak to parents and teachers-- and in one junior high school setting, other students. :shudders: I would hope that FERPA would prevent such a thing in this day and age... but. We're both well beyond Mensa qualified.

My DD's rate of learning and advancement alone suggest that she's at least another standard deviation out, probably. The person she most resembles in either famiily is my father, whose old SB results were in the 170+ range. That's obviously freakshow territory, big-time. NO good (in our opinion) can come from having those numbers in our particular case. We are already able to differentiate right up to the limit of what seems emotionally/physically/maturation-wise possible for the child in question. We're there already, so no reason to test. The only thing it would do is take the focus off of the PERSON she is, and focus attention onto only one facet of that person.

On the other hand, there is nothing "stealth" about my DD's cognitive ability. If there were, that's a reason to test so that you know what you're dealing with. Particularly true if there seem to be oddities about how a child's ability manifests as they get into elementary and beyond, since that can indicate an LD.



Excellent advice. What would it change? If the answer is "nothing" or "nothing, we HOPE" then it may not be worth it.

Mine too. People have been downright mean to me. I'm not in the PG/EG range by any means (153) but it's still enough. I've learned to choose carefully who I share the info with.

I'm still not clear why you want to test. Do you want to test your kid to get into a program? because he needs acceleration? curiosity?

Our approach has been that we will test if we have a need to test. We have only IQ tested one of our three kids. We were trying to figure out why she was crying every night of first grade. It turns out she is highly gifted with dyslexia and dysgraphia. So far no one has thrown her IQ in her face. I think having an LD changes that equation.

For my other kids, the standard district gt testing has been sufficient (CoGat, NNAT) to get them into the program in elementary. I never shared their numbers with them. The district also gave them Explore in 6th grade to see where they were going into middle school. Yes, there have been times that I have been curious but not enough to spend the money and have a number.

That's just it, Knute. I'm not sure I DO want to test him. I've just been told multiple times that getting him the education he needs would be ten times easier if I did. I've fought it for a long time, because I know there are plenty of negatives to having that information as well. My gut feeling is that I don't need to know, and neither does anyone else. But after the past two years of fighting the school to teach him - ANYTHING - that he doesn't already know, I'm wondering if I should change tactics.

I think achievement testing is probably going to do more in your effort to advocate to the school than an IQ score, personally. A high IQ is all good and well, but the vast majority of teachers and administrators can't say what that equates to in terms of education. They DO understand when a test shows a child is reading/comprehending at a 6th grade level when they are still in 3rd, or MAP scores showing they've mastered math a grade level ahead.

Is there any way to get the school to do any sort of achievement testing?

Given your situation, I would test. You'll have more information to use in advocating for him and it won't just be a "gut instinct" or observation. Unfortunately, we waited until my son was practically depressed before we tested and once we had the results, we finally understood the extent of his outlier status. When we shared it with the school, they were totally on board with finding solutions to challenging him. The approval for a skip came within 2 weeks (they did the IAS the next week). We didn't end up skipping and we're trying to figure out additional accommodations this year, but everyone is working toward extreme accommodations-- all because of the testing. So if you need "ammo," so to speak, data is what you need. We had both the WISC and an Explore test.

I think that epoh has a good point. This is all we've *ever* used in our advocacy for DD.

If you declare yourselves homeschoolers over some summer or long vacation break, for example, you can order inexpensive achievement tests from "Family Learning Organization or F.L.O." and pretty much test any level that you think might be appropriate. We tested only one year out of level before DD entered school (we were in fact homeschoolers at the time) and DD basically hit the ceilings on ever subsection. Straight up 99's.

In other words, we probably (knowing what we know NOW, I mean) could have turned around and jumped up to 4th grade from there to get something that wasn't entirely at the assessment ceiling.

Anyway. That was a CAT-5. The school completely knew what this was and understood that a 6yo who knocked the 2nd grade version out of the park in November was in need of a 3rd grade placement. At a minimum.

In other words, achievement testing may be exactly the route to try if you think that there are no complicating factors (2e) to contend with.

Hmm....I don't think there are any complicating factors, although obviously you can never be sure. He doesn't seem to be having any problems, aside from losing his focus when he gets bored. But I think that's just being an 8 year old boy. I didn't realize that achievement testing was an option. His AR scores for reading are around a late 5th/early 6th level, and they test his math pretty regularly - he's around a 5th grade for that as well. Is that the same thing? Or should I look at independent achievement tests? I like this idea far better than the idea of IQ testing, for a number of reasons.

To me, 170+ says "Mission Accomplished!"

I take it that your father had some interesting life experiences.

Yes, there are a number of independent batteries, and if you can find a way to get hold of them, proctor them yourself, and then get formal scores after a mail-in... that will allow you the freedom to test 'out-of-level' the way we did.

I highly recommend that. In hindsight, we should have tested DD at about a 4th grade level, not 2nd. But we didn't know. We had no idea that her scores would be that high. We did it to see how much more time was really needed since she seemed bored and resistant to the 2nd grade material we had, and it seemed like she was running through homeschool curricula faster and faster-- which was weird, since obviously as the material got more challenging, it should have been slowing her down. It wasn't, because she was more fully engaged the more challenging the material was.


It was a complete and total surprise to us that when we approached her charter school a few months later, they didn't balk at all about a 3rd grade placement on the basis of those achievement test scores (and a reading level pre-test with them). It really was that easy. Somehow the combination of "out-of-grade-level" and "ceiling" and "recognized, nationally-normed achievement test" was magical.



Jon, for a variety of reasons, while my dad's life was absolutely "interesting" it is most certainly not one that I'd wish on anyone, most particularly my own child. Think Dylan Thomas or Hemingway. Larger than life, and terrifying intellect, but this world is just not made for some people. Giving it a label is sometimes giving it LEGS, too. There is an element of "you're smarter than me, so I don't want to be around you because I want to feel smart and you'll make me feel stupid, since compared to you, I am kinda stupid..." that is impossible to overcome when that number stands in for the whole person, too. That's the real danger if the number is VERY high. I never wanted that to happen to DD. Oh, sure, sometimes other parents still feel threatened by her because of the multiple grade accels and what that must mean... but at least she's never just that number.

Our district's gifted testing starts with a screener (KBIT and TOMAGS) and then moves on to WISC-IV. I'm glad to have the IQ info, but have no intention of telling my kids their "numbers". Interestingly, DH and I didn't learn our actual IQs until we had our oldest tested -- apparently at that point each of our parents decided we were old enough, or mature enough, to know. We were both in gifted programs at school as kids, so there was a general knowledge that we were at a certain level which I think parents thought was enough info.

I'm glad we have the info, as it helps us advocate for our kids better. Since the testing was done through the school, the administration "trusts" the data, so to speak. I don't think we'd be pushing as hard for math acceleration for our youngest without the info from the TOMAGS and WISC. Our district does a decent job with differentiation for MG and HG kids, so I feel like our two older kids are being well served, but our youngest is just at a different level with respect to math and I don't think I would have appreciated that without the testing, because he doesn't present himself that way.