Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy New here! Question about AIG testing?

My son is in third grade, and so far has done very well in almost everything. He gets almost all A's with the occasional B. The B is ALWAYS in reading, which he can do at a sixth grade level, so I really think he's just being lazy in that area. He is also doing math at a sixth grade level. He placed in the top three on his school's chess team. Second in the science fair. Had his writing published in a state competition. And he is very much an engineer in the making. He can make anything out of anything. Legos, erector sets, model kits, rockets....last Christmas while he was waiting for his sister to open her presents, he took some wrapping paper and scotch tape and made a fairly good Hubble Space Telescope. He started talking at around 5-6 months, and every teacher he has had since preschool has said that they think he is gifted. They finally did AIG testing a few weeks ago, using the CogAT and ITBS tests. His CogAT came back totally average, and ITBS was actually BELOW average. I was prepared for the possibility that he may not make AIG, just because I have no idea how far ahead of the other kids he is. But for his performance on everything else, it seems odd to me that he would come back at or below average. I'm aware that achievement and intelligence are not the same, but it seems odd to me that he would score lower than expected on BOTH of those tests.
He does zone out when he gets bored sometimes, but that's the nature of nine year old boys. So I never considered ADHD or anything like that, and I still think it's doubtful. We were told by an optometrist once that he has problems with visual processing, which I kind of ignored because he was an optometrist, not a psychologist. I just thought he was very strongly a kinesthetic learner. And lastly, he had a second grade teacher last year who made him so afraid of the end of year standardized tests, he came home in tears.
So as you can see, there are many possibilities. It may be that for whatever reason, his performance really is far higher than his IQ. It could also be that he got bored and zoned out during the test. (I have my questions about a cognitive ability test that is completely paper-based, but that's just me.) It could be that he really does have visual processing problems, or even that his nerves got the better of him. So what do I do? Do I let it go and hope he does better when they test him next year? Talk to his teacher? (I'm very wary of allowing ANYONE to see standardized test scores, for fear of pigeonholing him into their view of what he is and is not capable of). Appeal?
I guess I am not entirely sure WHAT is wrong, I just feel that SOMETHING is wrong. I'm just not sure what to do about it.

I think the overwhelming concensus is trust your instincts (other than on the being lazy part, as a lot of people seem to kick themselves for that attribution to their kids when they later understand the real issue.)

I would consider some outside testing. You may also want to contemplate this article on Stealth Dyslexia:
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10435.aspx

seaturtle, I agree that it is very important to trust your gut instincts when it comes to parenting. FWIW, here are my random thoughts:


I think that to compare performance to IQ it's important to have a fair comparison. For instance, if your ds was given a standard IQ test along with a standard achievement that are known to correlate, I would bw surprised to see achievement far outstrip IQ, and if it did, I would wonder if there was something that was perhaps inaccurate in the IQ test because in general, I don't think you'd expect to see a person wildly out-perform their ability.

OTOH, I don't think grades in a school classroom are a measure of achievement that can be easily compared to IQ. Grades in the classes my kids have been in have never been given out on a Bell Curve with Cs in the middle, and the material being taught in the typical early elementary classroom is almost always aimed at the middle of what kids are expected to be able to achieve (at best).



I would take another look at what the optometrist told you previously, and also think through why you had an optometrist eval (I'm guessing there was some concern that prompted the eval?) I realize behavioral optometrists and vision therapy can sound like complete hocus-pocus and a huge money sink, but I also have two children who have had very real vision challenges that have impacted their school work and which aren't solvable by simply putting a pair of eyeglasses on. My older dd has been through vision therapy and it helped her tremendously; my younger dd has less severe of an issue but she is also currently undergoing vision therapy... so that's my take on it, I'm a believer that it does help some types of vision challenges.

Re the reading grade - I don't see a lot of things in your post that would point to stealth dyslexia, but if you feel his grade doesn't reflect his ability in reading or see other signs that might point to a concern with reading (not wanting to read, or refusing to read aloud, or stumbling over words he should know) I would definitely recommend either looking through the info linked above on stealth dyslexia or seeking a private reading evaluation. Our dd8 is a high-acheiving student at school and she's reading above grade level (according to her school), but she has also recently been diagnosed with dyslexia. She isn't classically dyslexic, but she has a *huge* deficiency in one of the areas that impacts the ability to decode words. Most of her other reading eval scores are average or above average. She doesn't *look* dyslexic in part simply because she's a very driven child who seeks high grades and purposely hides anything that she thinks doesn't look perfect - and she's a bright child who can get away with lack of decoding ability to a certain extent by memorizing words and by seeking up meaning from context rather than individual words.


If you think the scores don't represent your ds and you really want to get him into the gifted program asap, I'd seek individual testing rather than relying on the group test results. You might be able to request this through the school (particularly if his teacher feels he's gifted), or if not, you can get the testing privately. This won't work everywhere, so I wouldn't spend money on it unless you feel that you'd be able to use the results and you're willing to risk that the results might come back showing he doesn't qualify for the gifted program. But - fwiw, our EG ds had taken the WISC prior to being given the CogAT to qualify for his school's gifted program. He was given the CogAT individually by a gifted program representative, with accommodations (he's 2e). He still only scored something like the 75th percentile. I was beyond shocked because that was hugely lower than his WISC scores. I later realized in reading online that it's not out of the realm of possibility (and happens more often than you'd think) that HG/EG/PG kiddos don't have comparable scores on the CogAT. The CogAT is a learned ability test, not an innate ability test - so exposure to some academics as well as answering questions within a bit of a square box can help scores. I remember asking ds about the test after he took it, and he told me about a few questions that he didn't know the answers to (the type of questions about things you would only know through exposure), and how he had deduced his answer - and he came up with great answers and really creative insightful reasoning... but they weren't the right answers. So a test like the CogAT *can* potentially trip up an outside-the-box high IQ kid.

Another thought - if there is any kind of visual challenge or reading issue, his scores on testing might be impacted by it.


Won't his teacher have access to his scores anyway - I thought it was a group test given at school? Here teachers would at least know which children have been id'd as "gifted".

Best wishes as you think through what to do next,

polarbear

It's frustrating when testing doesn't match the child.

We had a similar experience with our DS8 (gr.3). He has diagnoses of ADHD combined type, expressive/receptive language processing disorder, and a binaural integration imbalance (part of CAPD), as well as strabismus... all issues that could/would interfere with his ability to attend to and comply with testing instructions. (With the exception of the strabismus, maybe... it's somewhat mild).

We've had his psychologist and a child psychiatrist both say that he needs to be medicated to obtain accurate test results (we're opting not to medicate at the present time... but that's another thread). Both docs dismissed the cognitive test results as being fraught with errors and placed little value on them.

(kind of makes me wonder why we bothered)

As for the zoning out... both DS and I do that. (I tested as HG). I'd always assumed it was boredom for me, and maybe ADHD/boredom for DS? I have a tremendous amount of difficulty staying engaged when the pace is too slow and I tend to just float away. Not sure if that's GT, ADHD, or both.

You have valid points for your DS about possible test anxiety and vision issues. (Meanwhile don't worry about him being pigeon-holed: you could have him retested, or better yet, why not build a portfolio based on achievement to use for future advocacy?)

Is he happy at school? Do you feel like he's being challenged enough?

I don't have much insight into the tests and I don't trust grades much either. You can see your child and you know what he is capable of, thats all I can say.
About the reading part, when you say he is reading at 6th grade level, do you mean he is reading the books aimed for 6th grade or has he been administered some 6th grade level comprehension tests or exposed to 6th grade level comprehension work and did good. Did you try the comprehension tests at his level and or above level? If not, try those at home and observe him. What issues is he having while doing that work? Is he not paying attention, or having vision issues or having a difficult time following through - make him talk about the challenges he is having when doing that work.
Also many times, a small discussion every now and then about what they are reading can give an idea about how much they are comprehending.

All of the above. He is reading books (voluntarily) that are listed around a late 5th-early 6th level. They do comprehension testing at his school, and it's rated around that same level. I don't trust AR tests, although he does well on them, because their ratings for books always seem a bit higher than they should be. (When everyone else says a book should be fifth grade, they seem to put it around a 6 or so). And since AR is optional at his school, I told him that if he preferred, he could read whatever books he wanted and write me a detailed summary - which he did. So he seems to be comprehending pretty well.

I tend to zone out as well - and was halfway through grad school before I managed to train myself to pay attention even when I didn't want to. I did have a professor suggest once that I may have mild ADHD, but I never got tested, because I didn't want to be medicated and between full time school and full time work, I had no time for therapy. So I suppose ADHD is a possibility, although the way he can spend hours focusing on his latest lego or erector set masterpiece makes me skeptical about that. I think he's just really easily bored. When he brings home papers from school on a new topic that he hasn't covered yet, his grades are fantastic. But they begin to slip after a few days of the same tedious work. Always because of careless mistakes.
As far as whether he's getting a challenge, I think his teacher is doing everything in her power. She gives him more challenging spelling and vocabulary words, more diffucult math homework, and has told me that she has higher expectations for his writing than she does for most of the class. So he's getting a bit of a challenge, but not as much as I think he should have. I'm less worried about this year as I am about the future. His teacher right now is trying her best, and doing a moderately good job. But he has had teachers in the past whose idea of challenging him was allowing him to run errands around the school or help other kids who were struggling. I have told every teacher he has had since preschool that I'm happy as long as he is learning something new, and not just sitting in a chair and stagnating for seven hours a day.

It seems like your son might not be a good test-taker or just was not having a good day at the time of the test. Are you sure that the tests were administered properly? as sometimes not having a good teacher or other distractions in the class can cause that too. Also beaware that young boys are often diagnosed with ADHD when they are just being boys.

This can actually be a piece of ADHD as well... it's called "hyper focus."

ADHD kids/adults don't have trouble focusing on things they enjoy... they have trouble sticking to what they're supposed to be doing when it's something they don't feel like doing. The problem exists with the things they find boring or difficult.

(Except, scratch the "difficult" piece from a 2e kid - GT kids need challenge... my DS sometimes can only focus when he's challenged).

It's a... metacognition issue. "I need to stick to this boring homework and finish it, because my teacher expects it to be done." Most kids would be "meh" about it, but an ADHD kid would be constantly pulled away by distractions, almost powerless to keep themselves on task. A 2e/ADHD kid, meanwhile, can sometimes compensate and get the work done.

This is a GREAT book that clearly illustrates the differences between typical ADHD, 2e ADHD, and non-2e GT.

http://www.amazon.ca/Different-Minds-Deirdre-Lovecky/dp/1853029645

I highly recommend it - it's a great read.

Anyway (I ramble, lol), what I originally wanted to say... a GT/ADHD kid could easily zone into an enjoyable project for an extended period of time. (This doesn't mean your son has ADHD, it just means that the ability to focus on what he enjoys doesn't rule it out).

Yes... so true (this is one of the list of reasons we're not medicating our DS because we're juuuuust not 100% certain...)

The defining factor, to me, in choosing to medicate ADHD, is when the kids themselves are unhappy because they are unable to control themselves, even when they desperately want to. My son knows, KNOWS, he's not supposed to do certain things, but he cannot, for the life of him, stop himself from doing them... without meds.