Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment achievement testing

I am curious, what is the importance of having really high academic achievement? I have a child who was evaluated recently (1st grade, 7 yrs old). DD's WISC-IV was gifted range and GAI in the highly gifted range, no sign of learning or processing issues, she seems happy at school and it was her teacher that made the referral (with no prompting from us). She knows everything under the sun about dinosaurs and animals, plays two musical instruments well, is wickedly creative and very artistic and loves to write her own music and build lego creations. These are the things that she does when she is not at school. She does not particularly love to read or do math problems (although has been reading before bed for the last month or so), so she does them when she has to but they do not appear to bring her any joy. Her academic achievement scores were solidly 120's (about 25-30 points less than measured ability)and about two years ahead of where she should be for her age. I guess my question is how often at her age is achievement consistent with ability?

Did your teacher refer your dd for testing because she felt she was gifted, because she felt she was underachieving, or because she had concerns about her academic performance? If she was referred for testing simply to see if she was gifted, because her teacher felt she was, and as long as everything is going well as far as you can tell with school etc - I wouldn't put too much thought into the difference between her ability scores and her achievement scores. The WJ-III achievement tests are brief, and they cover very specific tasks - for instance, math fluency will test how many math problems she can solve within a short amount of time, and using handwriting to show her work. Her score could be influenced by a number of things that aren't related to ability - exposure to concepts, whether or not she tries to hurry or is motivated by the test being timed, how quickly she writes, prior practice with math facts, etc. My take on achievement tests (jmo) is that tests such as the WJ-III Achievement tests etc are very useful for sorting out the impact of learning challenges and strengths, but if you want to measure achievement that is more relevant for understanding grade placement, tests such as MAPS, ITBS, Terra Nova etc are more useful (for parents at least!).

The one thing you've noted that I'd want to know more about is why the difference in GAI vs FSIQ - that *can* be a signal of a challenge that impacts academics, and if that was the case, there might be something to the discrepancy in ability vs achievement scores. My ds, for example, is dysgraphic, and it shows up as a higher GAI than FSIQ (due to impact on Processing Speed subtest scores) and shows up in scatter in his WJ-III Achievement scores. If you have any concerns or are wondering about whether or not there's a challenge, I would look closer at the subtest scores - are they consistent between subtests or do they vary between subtests? (look at this both on WISC and on WJ-III).

I'm sorry I can't help answer the question re how often at age 7 is achievement consistent with ability, but fwiw, I suspect that's a question you could ask of the person who tested her.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Having achievement scores two years ahead of where she is does seem to be pretty high academic achievement to me, even if she doesn't show it in ways that you feel look that way. I have read some of your other posts and it seems like you are really trying to understand why these scores might be lower than you expect from her IQ scores. I think the person to ask would be the test administrator.

I think maybe it is more important for your child to encounter something challenging than it is to have really high academic achievement. I also think it is important for a child to be learning *new* things at school.

However, being really challenged is more difficult than it sounds. Especially if your child has a personality where they aren't going to rock the boat... Not being challenged may result in having very poor study skills later on when it counts.

I don't know how often it is the kids have high achievement in early elementary. My thinking is that it is probably not a lot since schools, imo, do not differentiate well at those grades. It will be interesting to hear other views on this.

I'm not sure if this answered your question, but I hope it might help. I am not an expert, and I would be interested in what other parents think.

While a child is in school their achievements may be "academic achievement". Exposure to extracurricular activities helps develop the child's other interests and areas of expertise, boosting achievement. Eventually, by the time a child completes high school and is evaluated by potential colleges/universities/employers, their achievement is generally all the individual may be evaluated on. IQ is not mentioned, rather the achievements or demonstrated ability and willingness for the individual to apply their knowledge, skills, and cognitive reasoning. [Here's a recent post discussing one company's job selection criteria... IQ phobia]

In 1st grade at 7 years old, depending upon the child's birthday and local norms, she may be older than some 1st graders? In general, many children are 5 in Kindergarten, 6 in 1st grade, 7 in 2nd grade.

If her achievement test scores are compared with an AGE cohort: If more children at age 7 are receiving academic instruction at the 2nd grade level, while she is receiving 1st grade instruction, her achievement scores may be comparatively less than the cohort.

If her achievement test scores are compared with a GRDAE LEVEL cohort: If more children in her 1st grade class are 6 years old, while she is 7 years old, her achievement scores may be comparatively higher than the cohort because she has an additional year of lived experiences.

Adding a wildcard to the mix: what is learned outside of school. Gifted children often explore on their own, creating projects, asking questions, reading and learning above their formal classroom grade-level instruction, internally driven 24/7 by a deep curiosity. Their progress may also depend upon other factors such as their personality and external factors such as having an intellectually supportive and enriched environment at home.

Recognizing your child's very high aptitude and also high achievement, you may wish to research acceleration, including the Iowa Acceleration Scale (IAS), giving some preliminary thought as to whether acceleration may be an option for your child at some point.

Thanks so much for the help! The psychologist that did the eval said she had not really tested any children in DD range so was not sure how to answer a lot of my questions. My daughter does have an eye turn and the coding subtest was much lower as a result, it does not impact other academics but the combination of unfamiliar symbols and time constraints was an issue (my husband is an eye doc so he has followed it closely). So the coding impacted psi hence the use of the GAI. The ITBS form E scores from last year were all 99th percentile so I prob should not worry:).