Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Cost of testing? Worth it to pay more now?

So... background: DD is a 6yo who is very advanced in reading,(Harry Potter in a week) comprehension and problem solving. Her math suffers because she reverses numbers and goes too fast. She is very emotional and that is what I'm most concerned with her not getting differentiated learning/opportunities. She's getting bored and picked on, but is trying to do the "right" thing and tends to suffer through it. How bored is she? its hard to tell. Her teacher says she's gifted but when they tried to assess her with an open writing assignment early in the school year she balked and her teacher even said the GT was not very early-childhood friendly.

DD's school does not offer much in the way of first/second grade friendly gifted stuff, but a neighboring school does. However, before we move houses and switch schools I'd like to get her tested so I can better advocate. Is it worth it to spend more now and see where she really is at? It's not cheap and we aren't rich, but we could use our tax return for the more comprehensive testing. I also don't want to submit her to testing once, then more testing down the road if we decide to do more, or is that overthinking it.

This is the email I got from the psychologist at a local college (which offers gifted programs) that I am thinking of having my daughter tested with:

At a basic level, I offer an abbreviated iq measure for students and families who just want a snap shot of a child's abilities; this is a 30-minute individual measure that yields verbal, nonverbal, and full scale iq scores. I provide a short report with the scores and recommendations for a total fee of $150.
The comprehensive assessments include the assessment fee, a full psychoeducational report, and a 30-minute parent consultation to review the results once I complete the report. The fee for either a comprehensive assessment of cognition or academic achievement is $450. For families that choose to complete both comprehensive measures of cognition and academic achievement, the fee rises to $750. The comprehensive assessments provide a much more detailed picture of a child's strengths and weaknesses within cognition (IQ) or academic achievement. I do have behavioral measures that I can use to assess for particular disorders or characteristics of disorders (e.g. ADHD, withdrawal, depression, social issues, aggressiveness). Typically, I charge $75 for behavioral measures, on top of whatever other assessments are chosen.

Any and all advice is welcomed!

How much do you know about the gifted program at the other school? Just because a school offers gifted services doesn't necessarily mean it can provide what your daughter needs. A flexible school without a gifted program may work better than a rigid school with a gifted program. It depends on the individual school and whether they will work with you.

My daughter had a brief assessment and then later a full assessment. I think it depends on what you hope to accomplish. If you just have a brief IQ test, it may be helpful to you in knowing some of your daugher's strengths and weaknesses. It probably won't be enough to get you very far with the school, although it may help you make the decision about whether she needs another school. The comprehensive assessment may be more useful with the school, but not necessarily. You may want to ask in advance because some will put more weight on outside testing than others do. If your daughter does well, though, the more comprehensive assessment might qualify her for other programs (such as DYS).

If the brief assessment is subtests of a larger test (as opposed to a separate shorter test like the RIAS), it's possible they might let you go back for he remaining subtests. That isn't standard administration, though.

We did both the short test and a more comprehensive assessment and did find both useful. The short test gave us an apparently accurate IQ (it was the RIAS and the score was similar to my daughter's score on the WISC-IV). It was probably equally good for negotiating with the school district (they didn't put much weight on any outside testing). However, the more comprehensive test gave us a great deal more information about strengths and weaknesses and also qualified her for DYS, which seemed to mean more to the school than the scores did.

If it's not a terrible hardship, the comprehensive scores would give you much more information. Would they let you do cognitive before deciding whether to do achievement as well? My concern is that you may find it doesn't get you very far with the school and then regret the expense; if you think just having the detailed information about strengths and weaknesses would be worthwhile to you even without the school using it or if the school says they would use it, then that makes it more worthwhile.

Finally, make sure to check carefully to know who is going to do the test. It helps if kids have a good rapport with the tester and someone experienced with gifted kids may test differently from someone unfamiliar with them. You mentioned that the college has a gifted department, but not whether the psychologist is affiliated with it.

Thanks for the detailed response! I guess I should find out exactly what the schools will take and exhaust those resources as well. Good idea on the cognitive before achievement, too. I'll look into that. Thanks again!

It all depends on what your concerns are and what information you feel you need to know about your child. If an IQ test is all you need to get her into the program you want, just start with that. You can always do the other evals later.

We started with an IQ test and eval of fine/gross motor skills for my DS6 over the summer because of difficulties he was having at school. We didn't do a full-eval by the neuro-psych at the time because we were trying to minimize cost and felt it wasn't necessary. We learned a great deal about my son, and we felt like at the time it was all we needed. Six months later we saw that he wasn't getting what he needed at school in terms of differentiation and extra assistance for his 2E, and we decided to complete the full eval. We feel like this further documentation by a professional will help us better advocate for our son. We also needed the achievement test results to apply for DYS because while my son's IQ qualifies him, his 2e makes it hard to pull together a portfolio. We just got the results last week so keeping my fingers crossed it makes a difference. My DS didn't mind the split testing at all.

I agree with apm221 that just because a school offers gifted, it doesn't make it a great program. We had considered moving to another state (not for schools, but other reasons), and they had a full-day gifted program starting in 2nd grade in a school that funds gifted ed. In the end we felt that our school where gifted ed starts in 3rd grade and is only a pull-out for LA and math may be a better situation for us. Our state doesn't mandate or fund gifted ed, but we have a good relationship with the school and feel like they are going to be willing to work with us.

$750? eeks. This is still better than some places I have seen charge $2000 I guess. lol. We paid about $250 for both cognition and academic....and it was worth every.single.penny. I suppose I would have paid $750...but here being labeled gifted qualified him for an IEP and services at school and a weekend and summer program at our local university.

Yes, this a very good point to be aware of, so glad you mentioned this. It is discussed briefly on a recent thread here: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....t_do_you_tell_your_DC_be.html#Post174222

In a nutshell, here are two great articles about testing, written several years apart:
1- Aimee Yermish, 2002, linked from Hoagies Gifted Education Page http://www.hoagiesgifted.com/test_prep.htm
2- Nadia Webb, 2006, linked from Davidson Database http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10404.aspx Beginning with questions above chronological age may be seen as one important difference from the Yermish article which describes the test as beginning with easy questions (the kind which many describe as inspiring kids to give silly answers, detracting from their performance score).

This is not to detract from Aimee's article, as the purpose of the article is for parents to prepare children for what to expect during testing... even if a tester is choosing questions which are above chronological age, they may be seen by an HG or PG child as "easy"... therefore it may be wise to prepare a child that they may receive easy questions with obvious answers... so they can decide ahead of time not to be too silly if this occurs.

It is hard to give a full opinion without knowing where you live. Cost of tests will depend on a number of things- location/state, type of test, etc.
Personally, I don't like the "short IQ" tests because I think they are more likely to miss stuff...
In my area a full iq test (WISC-iv or Stanford Binet) costs between $ 300 to $400 USD. A full psychoeducational asssessment costs a lot more--- 2000 usd.