Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Struggling with when to test

DS will be 5 in a month. He is in his second year at a Montessori preschool and will return there next year for his kindergarten year. We have him in the half day program.

We'll need to put him in a different school for first grade as his current school ends in kindergarten. One option under consideration is a public self contained gifted program. I've had it in the back of my mind that we would test him with the Wisc next year just after he turns 6. Lately, I've been debating whether we should wait a year or just test now.

Potential benefits of testing now:

1. His current school is quite rigid in the sequence of work and the repetition required, which is causing boredom for DS. Maybe testing would convince them to be a little more flexible?

2. We would have more time to review options before deciding on a school for first grade. Taking the WISC next March, around the time we should be committing to a school, may be rushing things.

3. It may give me some peace of mind to have a better idea of what we are dealing with. I am confident that DS is gifted, but I don't know whether his level of giftedness is going to require major accommodations.

4. DS is starting to become very self-critical about minor things. Maybe testing would give us some insight on how to support him emotionally.

Potential reasons to wait a year:

1. Waiting a year might give us more accurate/stable results.

2. I've heard that ceiling issues might cause problems for gifted 5 year olds taking the WISC.

3. If we also do achievement testing, more current tests could be used to help his new school give instruction appropriately matched to his academic level.

I would really appreciate any insight - thank you!

Welcome to the board. Here's my 2 cents.

In my experience scores have helped a bit but not as much as I would have hoped. Some schools/teachers get it, some don't. Wherever they are they can be swayed slightly but generally not from one extreme to another.

Not sure where you live (feel free to PM if you want to know where I am) but in our city for public schools even June would be ok. Private schools are a whole other ball game though.

Totally agree on this one but I will add that personality also plays a part. My kids both dealt with school in very different ways and IQ scores weren't the only explanation for that.

Assume he is and go from there. Parents are pretty good at guessing this stuff.

Yes - we tested at 6.5 and weren't able to get accurate results at that time with DS. We had to then test again 2 years later.

I'll leave this to the testing experts...

We didn't even bother with achievement testing for DD because we knew it wouldn't change things with the school. IQ scores were enough to access what we needed to access and teachers would either do something or ignore them so we saved the money.

In general I think it is important to understand more info about what the school you are looking at will accept for tests and their timeline. One of the school boards that my kids is in will only accept WISC scores for example (although to be fair they don't have a congregated program that 5 year olds need qualifying scores for).

If you have any reason to suspect that ceilings could be an issue, our tester recommended waiting until DS was 6, so he could do the WISC. I believe that aeh has also mentioned that extended norms may soon be available for the WISC-V.

Well, I feel like we just did this. So I can give you my thoughts about it about a year later, in case it's helpful. We tested at 4 years 11 months.

Testing itself at that age was a good experience. The psychologist was great with DS and he really enjoyed the test. He thought it was a game. Other than $$ there was no real downside.

Fast forward a year to K, using those results to get our DS AIG-identified with our school has been a huge amt of effort. In addition, it has accomplished very little. He's supposedly on an IDEP but there's not much "individual" about our IDEP at all. It will be interesting to see how this goes next year when we really push and advocate for more. Even though DS qualifies as "High Need" for gifted services in both Math and LA, they've provided no services at all.

Having said that, I will be advocating more actively for his 1st grade year and I do think the test scores will help at that point. At the very least it gives *ME* more confidence, knowing the data supports my statements. However, I do kind of wish his test scores were more current. To me the scores of a just turned 5 year old are less reliable. I can't predict how school administrators will feel about that in the future. It's actually one question I have as well.

I did find peace of mind in knowing the results and knowing what I was dealing with. The results were close to what I'd guess, but there's a difference between thinking you know and knowing. I found Deborah Ruf's 5 Levels of Giftedness to be a good predictor of DS's score, FWIW.

We did DS's testing to inform our school choice. It did help. However, for our DD who is younger I think we will wait until mid K or so to do testing, knowing the school really isn't very open to accommodations for K students anyway. We like our school choice and already know we will send her to the same school her older brother goes to.

If you can get into a public self contained gifted program, by the way, I say go for it. That would be amazing. We have something here but it doesn't start until 4th grade. I was in one in 4th - 6th grade myself and it was really a great experience.

2. Ceiling effects might be a factor for GT 5 year olds taking the WPPSI, not the WISC. 5 year olds cannot take the WISC (the lowest age is six).

In fact, if it fits into your budget, and you think your child will tolerate it, you have the option of a WPPSI-IV now, and a WISC-V in a year. In both cases, there is a significant likelihood of unstable results, but as long as you view them only as data about present levels (not necessarily rigorously predictive), they can still have value.

If you are viewing testing as a possible component of access to certain kinds of gifted or private programming, it may helpful to survey the kinds of testing that are accepted by those programs, prior to testing. Since you cannot retest with the same instrument within two years, that is also a consideration. (You may obtain more stable, "better" results nearer the deadline for score submission, as your child will be older, and thus more likely to demonstrate the full range of his skills in an on-demand testing situation.)

Yes, sorry about the typo! I of course meant ceiling effects on the WPPSI. The only gifted program that we may apply for accepts both the WPPSI and the WISC. I don't know at this time whether we will apply, but part of my thinking is that testing early would give us all of next year to start a conversation with the school and understand what we'd be getting into. I don't think they'll take us seriously until we have test results, so waiting for the WISC next March might be rushed.

Can anyone shed light on how significant the ceiling factors are? E.g., at what level would a child typically be significantly impacted - 98%? 99? 99.9? I know that I'm oversimplifying, but I'm just trying to get a handle on whether this is a realistic concern or not.

Thank you very much for your input! We are pretty lucky to be in a district that offers self contained starting in first grade. They accept the WPPSI (with clear rules around cutoffs), and apparently, once a student is identified as gifted, the designation is there to stay. So, the red tape part of things sounds pretty straightforward.

However, the curriculum offered is still the standard curriculum, with added "enrichment" - does that change your opinion? I don't understand how they teach a regular first grade math curriculum in a class full of gifted students, but that is the policy. On the plus side, he would have a teacher who understands gifted students, would move through the curriculum more quickly with less repetition, and would get to do some really interesting projects.

Chay, thank you so much for your detailed reply. Unfortunately I'm not skilled enough to reply using multi-quote, so I'll just dump all my thoughts here!

My thought on timing of applying for public gifted is that if I have test results in hand early, I can start having conversations with the school (and be taken seriously) early on, in order to make sure that this is the right placement for DS. Also, I've been told that the board does not have to provide us with a gifted placement until we are officially enrolled. So, it could involve starting in September at our home school before having a transfer approved. Because of this issue, I'd rather have our request submitted nice and early, in case that helps with their planning.

I agree with your comment that personality plays a role. I am seeing signs that DS's younger sister may be at the same level as him. I'm not worrying about her yet because she has a totally different personality that I think will enable her to be very successful in school. DS needs to have his academic needs met, and needs a teacher who understands the way he thinks.

The public school we are looking at will accept the WPPSI, so we could just go with it and be done. I guess my concern is wanting to get information about what level of giftedness we are looking at, and a fear that we won't pinpoint that via the WPPSI.

Thanks for your reply! Do you mind sharing what your son's age was when you received this recommendation? I'm wondering if we could mitigate this issue by testing DS just after he turns 5, or if that would still be old enough to be an issue.

DS was 5. To give some background, DD was already a DYS and DS had taken the WJ, with very high scores. The tester therefore opined that the WPPSI did not have very high ceilings for 5-year-olds and that it would be better to wait until he was 6 so that he could instead be tested on the WISC. I was hoping to just test him once, so in retrospect, this was a good recommendation. Also, the WISC (the IV was all that was available at the time) had extended norms, which he ended up needing.