Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Psych test says gifted, school retest says no

DS8 (or will be in a week) sat the WISC IV last fall with a private psychologist and tested at FSIQ 131/ GAI 144. Psych also did the Woodcock Johnson tests of achievement in reading and math. Reading was superior range, math was between high average and very superior. The psych's recommendation was that DS be at least subject accelerated in reading and math. We referred him for acceleration about 5 weeks ago. Today the principal called and said that they administered the Woodcock Johnson Test for Cognitive Abilities and that DS had scored 114 so he was not eligible for acceleration.

Our questions are these:

1. What could cause such a drastic drop from the WISC IV in September 2014 to the Woodcock Johnson last week?

2. Does anyone out there know Ohio Gifted Education Policy? We checked on the state Department of Ed website and from what I can tell all districts must accept private testing, and that once a child is identified as gifted, they cannot be "un-identified".

Thanks for your input.

A few possibilities may be found in this old thread, How much error can there be in test scores?

Did the psychologist give you the numbers for the WJ test? I think superior is 120-129, very superior is 130+ and above average is 110 plus, so maybe the difference isn't that huge.

One of my kids had a discrepancy like that between the WISC and the WJ. His WJ cognitive scores were about 20 pts lower than his WISC scores. His WISC GAI was 143. I think that different tests suit different kids, and then there are other factors like tester rapport, how well they slept the night before, etc. I will say that this child is 2e with dyslexia, which I feel strongly also makes him an inconsistent performer.

Agreed. The wikipedia page on IQ classification shows many tables which relate various IQ ranges to descriptive terminology for each range.

The WJ numbers are as follows:
Broad Reading Skills - 131
Basic Reading Skills - 127
Reading Comprehension - 129

Math Comprehension Skills - 110
Mathematics Reasonsing - 134
Academic Fluency - 124

These numbers were from the private psychologist, not the school psychologist. I have requested all of the test scores from the school psychologist, but do not have them yet.

Does it make a difference in WJ if the child has a slower processing speed? DS definitely does.

This old post from a thread about IQ for acceleration? may be of interest. It shares a position from the Iowa Acceleration Scale (IAS) regarding IQ and acceleration.

I read this thread, thank you! One question I had....the WISC IV was conducted by a Masters level tester under the supervision of a Psy D. The Psy D scored the test. the WJ was conducted by a M Ed and Ed S degreed person. She typically works with kids on the other end of the IQ scale, so I don't think she has much experience working with GT. The tester for the WJ left the room at one point to obtain another test commenting that it wasn't a test that she used much. Does that make a difference in the results?

Are these the only numbers you have for the WJ-III testing that the school gave? If so, I think it's possible (maybe probable) that they didn't give your ds the full WJ-III Test of Cognitive Abilities, and if that's the case, then you don't have an apples-to-apples comparison with the FSIQ and GAI from his previous WISC.

Do you have any number on the report from the WJ-III called the "GIA"? That would be what you need to compare to the FSIQ. There isn't a corresponding # for the WISC GAI (taking out Processing Speed and Working Memory), however (fwiw), my ds, with a very low Processing Speed on the WISC has a WJ-III GIA that is almost identical to his WISC GAI.

My guess is that the school psych used a subset of the WJ-III Cognitive subtests combined with a subset (math and reading) of the WJ-III Achievement subtests to come up with the #s you have above. You can most likely google to find out which WJ-III subtests are combined for each category that you have listed. If this is the case, you really don't have anything you can compare, and it's likely that the differences in #s you're seeing are related (possibly) to whatever caused the need to calculate the GAI rather than FSIQ on the WISC.


As I mentioned above, my EG ds has a very slow processing speed on the WISC (due to fine motor issues), and has a corresponding slow subtest on the WJ-III Cognitive, but his WJ-III GIA # is almost identical to his WISC GAI. OTOH, you can definitely see the impact of his fine motor challenge on the WJ-III *Achievement* test scores (the subtests that are timed and require written output have much lower scores than would be predicted based on his overall IQ. So yes, it's possible that on the achievement subtests you'd see an impact. Also possible you might see an impact on GIA, but I'd expect it to fall in the range of at least his FSIQ.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Even though the verbage associated with each test (WISC vs WJ-III Cog) is different, I thought they both followed (in theory) a normal distribution centered on 100 with a standard deviation of 15, which means the WJ-III GIA should be comparable to the WISC FSIQ. I am hoping aeh will see this and let us know if there is in fact a difference in how the scores are distributed

polarbear