Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Should I apply to Davidson or wait?

I'd think we'd want testing to be prescriptive/predictive rather than competitive/comparative.

If you look at the scores of say the SB-LM and case studies, you can start to answer longitudinal questions. Like what level of acceleration tends to have the best outcome for a kid who scores 160 on SB-LM, or what is an ideal number of repititions for someone with a 140 on SB-LM, etc.

The Flynn effect would more strongly imply that the system needs to change more to meet the needs of the growing segment of fast learners than that fast learners need to be parsed out with a solid percent. Gifted research into methods related to the top 3% from 20 years ago may now need to be applied to the top 20%.

(blissfully ignoring that prepping gunks the whole thing up)

Cricket2,
I agree with you about the SB-LM. The scores seem inflated.

polarbear,
Our boys sound alike. Did your son also have a decent processing score when they removed the fine motor aspect? Also beery VMI scores that were astoundingly low?

The doctor said that we would have a more accurate score on the WISC because the ceilings are higher. My son is getting tested on that as soon as he meets the age limit, and I'm glad you have found it reliable, even with testers unfamiliar with giftedness. That reassures me, because I would prefer to test through insurance than pay outright. More money for books that way!

Is your son in Davidson's then? They can calculate a GAI on the WISC, and also, the children are older and more cooperative during testing (or so I hear). I expect my son to do better, only because the ceilings were so low that he thought the test was easy. It may be that there are new parts of the test he will find difficult though, who knows.

Zen Scanner,
I can see your points.

I think figuring out how much acceleration and repetition my child needs is something I can do without paying a lot of money for an additional test. I don't want a number unless it's useful it getting services for my child (IEP, gifted program, so on).

It would be nice to have better tests, no?

metis,

I didn't apply to DYS for my ds because he didn't have qualifying achievement scores and I didn't think there was enough of a benefit for us to bother with putting together a portfolio. Getting achievement scores was very challenging for us in early elementary - the times he was given his tests, other than his first set of testing for an early gifted program - were times that the assessment was addressing the impact of his handwriting and expressive language challenges, so he didn't have accommodations on those achievement tests, and the fluency subtests always had low scores because they were timed and relied on handwriting for the response. As he's gotten older and has taken other types of achievement tests through school with accommodations, his scores are back up where we'd expect they should be based on ability... sooo... right now I'm working on (slowly lol!) getting his college board accommodations in place so he can take the SAT and ACT early, and if he has qualifying scores on them maybe we'll apply. Honestly it's not something that has been a high priority for us because I don't think it would help with advocacy at school at this point in time, and he's not really looking for peers through DYS, he's fairly happy with the friends he's found through school. I have found, however, that it *is* extremely helpful to have the WISC testing, both for advocating at school and more so for understanding his challenges

He did have low scores on the Beery VMI, and also on part of the NEPSY (not sure if your ds had that or an equivalent?). I will have to look up the Beery to see which tests he scored lower on- if I remember correctly he had one significantly lower than the other (I think it's two-part?). He also had and OT eval in 2nd grade which was all average or above but had a large split with some scores high, some only hovering around average or maybe low average.

When you have your ds retested, I'd ask the tester if they are willing to calculate extended norms on the WISC. Our tester didn't offer that, and I didn't know about them at the time! She also didn't automatically offer up the GAI the first time he was tested either, until I asked a question about something and she said "Oh! I can give you a number that isn't impacted by processing speed if you want it!" (duh!)

Best wishes,

polarbear

polarbear,

Raising a twice-exceptional child is no picnic.

I'll ask the tester about doing extended norms. Do most achievement tests rely heavily on writing processing speed? If that's so, then we will likely have problems in the future as well. It would be almost impossible for a profoundly gifted child with dysgraphia to get the scores Davidson requires on a test like that. My son's achievement tests are at an acceptable level, only because writing is a separate subtest at this age. Even so, his slightly above-average score, is the one I am MOST proud of. He earned every bit of that score through hard work.

My PG daughter with dysgraphia got into Davidson on testing alone, Metis (WISC-IV and Woodcock-Johnson achievement). Her qualifying score was Broad Math - her verbal scores were also high, but not Davidson-high.

ElizabethN,

That's good to know.

So the Woodcock-Johnson test doesn't require any writing? Our doctor was planning to use the WIAT again. We had a writing subtest separate from math and reading, but I think in the versions for older children, the writing is mixed in. For example, my guess is that children are timed when writing math problems. I could be wrong though. Can anyone chime in on this?

My understanding is that academic testing is used to diagnose dysgraphia, so if a child scores high in writing, then he/she clearly doesn't have dysgraphia. My son was diagnosed because most scores were very high except when writing was required. Various motor tests and his developmental history back up the diagnosis. Was your child diagnosed the same way? Does she have an IEP?

I doubt the Doctor we have will want to use a test he isn't familiar with, but it's good to know that other test options are out there. I'm unlikely to pay for additional testing just to get into Davidson, but it's nice to know that there are options that exclude the disability effect, so that you can get a true picture of where your child is academically.

Has Davidson's been helpful for you?

ElizabethN, polarbear,

Thanks for replying.
It's nice to know that others are in similar situations.

My son is currently in therapy, and we recently started Handwriting without Tears. We assumed that he would teach himself to write, the way he has taught himself everything else, but he actually needs our help, and even, *gasp*, repetition. We are still adjusting to the fact that these things are difficult for him, and that we need to be actively involved.

Have you seen progress with your kids over time?
Any recommendations?

Some do, some don't - did your ds have the WIAT this time around? My children haven't taken the WIAT so I'm not familiar with it. They've had the WJ-III, and in that, handwriting impacted my ds' scores significantly across the reading/writing/math tests - if you group his scores by response type (oral vs handwriting vs handwriting+timed), the oral response subtest scores align with his ability scores; the handwriting (untimed) scores show about a 35+ drop in percentile and the subtests that require handwritten responses and are also timed were down in the 7th-20th percentiles. The handwritten response tests that weren't timed dropped due to the impact of having to focus every bit of working memory on the act of handwriting, and the timed handwritten response tests had not only that but his handwriting is simply incredibly slow. The one good thing about that is that when we group the scores that way, it helped tremendously in showing school staff the impact of dysgraphia. Our neuropsych also told us that there are two versions of the WJ-III Achievement tests, so if we had wanted to, we could have paid another tester to have the second version given to our ds with an oral response accommodation to show the difference in scores when handwriting was taken out of the picture. We didn't opt to do that due to time and $.


On the type of achievement test that is typically used by psychologists comparing ability to achievement, yes - that's part of the point of testing ability vs achievement with the WJ-III combo and the WISC/WIAT. However, once you have that type of testing done, and you have a dysgraphia diagnosis, you can request and should receive testing accommodations for testing in the classroom, state testing, and hopefully college board testing. My ds had accommodations in place at school by the time he had testing that really mattered on his record at school, and he's done very well on that type of testing (with a glaring exception, which happened on a test where he was not given one of his accommodations).

Another hopeful note - our neuropsych has told us that eventually the college boards tests will be moved to the computer, and that will take away a large chunk of the challenge of standardized testing for dysgraphic students.

FWIW, the accommodations that my ds has for testing are: extended time, writing answers in the answer book, and word processor for essay questions.


I soooo totally understand!

polarbear

I think WJ-III requires some writing, but most of it is not timed. DD9 is doing better and better with writing, but there is still a profound mismatch between her ability to answer questions verbally and her ability to answer them in writing. The tester did comment that it was great that she tried to write down some of her work as she was solving some of the harder problems, instead of holding it all in her memory and just writing down a final answer.

She does not have an IEP, because her achievement level is too high. She does have a 504 plan for SPD and "emotional volatility." She was diagnosed mostly on the mismatch between the timed written sections of the WISC-III and the untimed sections, I think.
I would have to go back and dig out the report to check on that.


We haven't done a lot with Davidson yet - she only joined in September. But I'm really glad that she did, because it has put us in contact with some wonderful peers for her. You would think that she would have been able to find friends in the highly-gifted public school program that she's in, but in fact, she was more comfortable with the Davidson girls after ten minutes than she is with classmates she's known for eighteen months. (And we felt the same way about their parents!) DH and I have had one very useful phone call with the Davidson folks about her 504 plan, which is still really a work in progress. They're not a panacea, but they're definitely helpful.