Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Confused by test scores and conflicting input

Hi all,
I apologize for the long story, but I think you need some background to understand my confusion. My son is 9 years old. He struggled in 1st and 2nd grade, becoming increasingly unhappy at school. His Montessori teacher said he was fine, doing average at everything, but he was very depressed and our pediatrician recommended educational testing.

An independent psychologist gave him the WISC-IV. He scored verbal comprehension 155, Working Memory 104, Perceptual Reasoning 149, Processing Speed 112. His full scale IQ was 143, 99.8th %. The psychologist said he was not in a challenging enough environment and that this was the main source of his problem.

This didn't sound at all right to his teacher, who was shocked by his scores. We applied for our city's gifted-and-talented school (must have a nationally normed score of 99%), but he didn't get in. Surely, his poor teacher recommendation played a part.

For third grade, we switched him to our neighborhood school. He has been happier there and has become increasingly engaged with the school work. At his fall check-in, his new teacher said he was behind in math and that he had started remedial work. We were surprised by this since we thought he excelled in math. He had done the tests for Oregon's gifted program in kindergarten and scored ITBS Math: 98% (at the time his CogAT was 89%). She noted as an aside that he scored high on the test when it wasn't timed.

This teacher discouraged us from applying for the gifted and talented program, but we felt we should considering his previous scores. The school decided to retest him. Today we got the letter saying he did not qualify as he'd scored 94% on the CogAT Screener test. (For Oregon's TAG program you must have a 97% score.)

Have others experienced these fluctuating test scores and conflicting input? My son has some sensory issues and difficulty with handwriting. Because of his complicated profile, I wanted him to be classified as gifted and talented so that teachers would know that he *needs* intellectual challenge--he comes off as disengaged unless he's really excited about a topic. But, maybe that's not the case? I'm not sure what to do next. Do more independent testing, appeal the TAG decision, re-apply next year, or just leave it be? Any advice appreciated.

Thank you for your feedback! The psychologist thinks he might have ADD, but i's hard for me to wrap my head around that since he focuses *so intensely* on things he's interested in. We've been waiting all school year for him to be tested at our local teaching hospital where insurance will pay. His occupational therapist and pediatrician say that he has sensory processing disorder that affects his motor skills--in particular his handwriting. But, sensory processing isn't a diagnosis that is accepted by the school district. We're hoping the additional testing will help clear up that part of the picture.

I appealed the talented and gifted decision, pointing out that the official policy is for them to accept WISC full-scale IQ scores from outside sources as long as they're no more than 2 years old. It has been very interesting to hear that many kids that score high on the WISC don't do as well on the Cogat.

Wow! You have a very gifted child on your hands- I can't believe the schools haven't recognized this! We had a similar problem with the Cogat - my ds10 took it twice and didn't make the gifted cut. We later had private testing and he scored 140 On WISC. In all of four years of Elem school not one teacher ever mentioned the word or thought of gifted to us- he did have behavior issues though- very high energy. only one student teacher tried to tell me he was gifted- simply because her son was gifted and she said he reminded her of him-so I'd say teachers aren't the best identifiers which makes it very frustrating.

I investigated the Cogat and discovered that he had simply run out of time.
He had a slow and accurate approach where nearly everything attempted was correct he just didn't finish. He is also having similar issues in school now - not finishing math tests. He's proven his ability of higher math when no time constraints, but when there are limitations in time the scores go down.
I am currently working on getting more time for math tests as the tester suggested this in the report.

Good for you for appealing the G&T decision- I did the same thing and got him into G&T, unfortunately it was just a weekly pullout and kind of a disappointment
: (
Good luck!