Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Got WJ-III Achievement tests back - discrepancies?

So we met with DS6's test administrator today and received his WJ-III Ach results. We had him take this test to help us possibly identify LDs associated with his slow writing speed.

So I'm trying to figure out how to determine if there are ability-to-achievement discrepancies now, being that we didn't have him take the WJ-III Cognitive (but he has WISC-IV results). It looks like Riverside published a discrepancy chart with the WISC-III as source but not the WISC-IV. Is this the right place to be looking?

They are interesting results, even without calculating a discrepancy. His calculation, writing fluency and math fluency scores were surprisingly low (47th, 53rd and 30th percentiles, respectively) but his writing samples score was 94th percentile. Likewise, math calc. skills was 44th percentile but brief math was 94th. Is this alone enough to tell if there is a significant discrepancy?

His reading / vocab stuff was all about what I expected. I have to chuckle at his Story Recall score, though. At 99.5th percentile, he apparently has an age equivalency greater than a 20-year-old. The test admin jokingly told me, "Don't tell him anything you don't want him to remember!"

There are no official Riverside discrepancy tables for WISC-IV/WJIII, but there are some state-developed statistical approximations, such as this collection in Kentucky:

http://education.ky.gov/specialed/excep/pages/ld-reference-tables.aspx

Or this simpler one from Cleveland:

http://www.clevelandschools.org/specserv/usb/SLD%20Regression%20Table.pdf

Using the tables can be a bit complicated, if you're not comfortable with regression tables. If you'd like help with them, pm me.

Thanks, aeh! Consider yourself PMed.

DD has a similar profile. The school used DD's WISC GAI of 150 (it actually says to use the GAI in the State manual for doing educational evaluations), and the cut-off for having a severe discrepancy with a 150 GAI was 110, but it had to be a full cluster score (like Broad Writing or Broad Math) rather than on an individual sub-test. She scored as having a severe discrepancy and could have qualified for an IEP for LD but the school stated that she is average/above average and they don't need to do that. I think to diagnose an LD there should also be testing done to determine if there are information processing issues. So for instance processing speed/working memory issues. The neuropsych who assessed DD seemed to use the combination of the WISC processing speed score along with the fact that she had poor fluency scores compared to other scores, in order to determine slow processing speed. DD also has organizational/planning issues and it showed up on standardized tests like the Rey Complex Figure drawing and the BRIEF for executive functioning.

edited to add, her writing speed is also slow, but her overall motor skills are very good. I think it is related to pulling the information out of memory (like recalling how to write a certain letter), and executing it, but not to the level that someone with obvious dysgraphia would have. Neuropsych claimed her issues are caused by slow processing and poor EF. "The file cabinets are disordered", meaning she isn't accessing information quickly and responding. For whatever reason, her reading fluency is not affected and has always been excellent.

blackcat, that's a very similar profile to my DS, right down to the excellent reading but relatively low (i.e., average) math and writing fluency.

Interesting. I do wonder if there is such a thing as "borderline dysgraphic."

How old is your DD, again? We're waiting to see what happens with his the reasoning-to-fluency gap over the next year. His age-normed fluency scores were lower than his grade-normed scores, which may simply be a product of him being old for his grade, but it's possible that gap may continue to widen.

The achievement test administrator didn't notice anything notably unusual with such a gap, and she has done a good amount of work with gifted kids. So we're taking that as a cue to relax a bit and just keep our eyes open in the future.

She is 9 going into 5th grade, so she is young for her grade and I had concerns about the fact that she's actually behind the kids in the next lower grade (despite having access to a higher level curriculum than them). With a 6 year old it's possible that you will see a lot of changes in the next year or two.

DD did really well on both visual-motor integration tests that she did (I think over 80th percentile). If she had done poorly on those, the diagnosis would probably have been "dysgraphia". I think technically she should still be able to qualify for school services as LD though, because of the large gap between cognitive ability and her writing achievement test score, and other information processing concerns, like slow processing speed.

I personally see dysgraphia as kind of a spectrum, similar to other disorders. Some people are very mild and others are very severe.

It's helpful to look at what each subtest actually requires a child to do to help make sense of an uneven profile. For instance, on the WJ-III Achievement test, each subtest labelled "fluency" is timed; the other subtests aren't timed. A student who writes slow, for whatever reason, might have lower fluency subtest scores than other subtest scores.

[quote=GeorgeC}nteresting. I do wonder if there is such a thing as "borderline dysgraphic."[/quote]

While I agree that dysgraphia can occur as a "spectrum" (from mild to severe), I do think that there is a component of yes/no (has it or doesn't), and it's important to understand if a child who has symptoms and test scores suggesting it either has dysgraphia or doesn't have dysgraphia.

My ds is dysgraphic. His diagnosis was made by a neuropscyhologist who observed a significant discrepancy in processing speed scores on the WISC-IV and a pattern of uneven test scores on the WJ-III Ach. The key is - she also looked at samples of ds' handwriting and followed up with other tests to tease out, was it dysgraphia or something else (finger-tapping tests, visual-motor integration). Even if you feel you know for certain that a low processing speed score and low fluency subtest scores indicate dysgraphia, the other tests I mentioned were extremely important in teasing out the *cause* of the dysgraphia (fine motor vs visual processing). Re the samples of handwriting, there are some typical clues for dysgraphia that you can look for in your ds' written work. Dysgraphia isn't just slow writing speed, it is a neurological disorder which prevents development of automaticity of handwriting. A dysgraphic student's handwriting samples might include letter reversals, mixing up capitals vs lower case, uneven pencil pressure, inability to follow lines when writing, lack of punctuation, poor spelling. If you watch a dysgraphic student write, some dysgraphic have extremely odd pencil grips, and some will have wrist pain (they will hold their wrist or elbow while writing). You might also notice that a dysgraphic student doesn't form letters consistently using the same pattern (top to bottom etc). A student with dysgraphia will sometimes refuse to write or will tire quickly when writing.

Given that you see a pattern of relatively low fluency tests combined with (I'm guessing here) a relatively low processing speed on the WISC, and you've observed that your ds writes slowly, I'd look for the other clues of dysgraphia in his handwriting samples. If you see other clues, I'd consider trying to get further testing to determine if he's actually dysgraphic and if so, what is the cause.

I wouldn't wait for a year to see if the gap widens, because if it *is* dysgraphia (or some other challenge), that year in school struggling with a challenge which other kids aren't struggling with can be very frustrating and potentially damaging to a young child's self-confidence and self-perception.

Best wishes,

polarbear

That's a great point, polarbear! Thanks.

He is notably slow when asked to do writing or math calculation tasks, but we've known this. So him doing relatively lower on timed tests doesn't really surprise me at all, but it also doesn't really tell me anything else, either.


Are these also WJ-III Achievement tests, or are these other, more specific sub-tests from somewhere else?

I can't say that I've noticed any of these things. He is mostly slow and cautious, and his subtest for capitalizations and punctuation (surprisingly) was quite high.

And this is where I need to figure out if I am worrying about a problem he doesn't really have or if I need to be out in front of providing a solution to a hidden problem that hasn't manifested itself yet... argh!

I didn't mean I would wait a year to reassess; I meant that I would keep an eye on him at school and alert his teachers that his fluency is an area for improvement. I think for now, that's the best I can do.

Neuropsych noted that dysgraphia does not have a well-accepted set of criteria, and with a kid like DD who fits some symptoms but not others, he thought it would just add more confusion to the situation and it was better to just say her issues stem from slow processing speed/EF dysfunction and be done with it. I do think that she has improved quite a bit with copy speed in the last 1.5 years. Not sure if someone with "dysgraphia" would imnprove like that with no treatment. Also, her handwriting is pretty good for the most part with no reversals, although she used to write over and over letters at age 7-8 (probably because she was making errors and then fixing them by writing over rather than erasing). She doesn't do that nearly as often. I'm guessing that there is some overlap between various conditions. Many kids with ADHD have poor handwriting, for instance.