Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment About to share scores with school

HI all,
I'm about to shares scores with DS school and was wondering if anyone can give me extra insight on what the scores mean. I'm especially interested in how the school might try to interpret the scores as a reason for not offering any services.

My son is having a much better year socially so we are now considering letting him stay in his current public school - if we can work out some type of better differentiation.

I'm not even sure what is reasonable to ask the school for regarding acceleration considering there is discrepancy between GAI and achievement scores. I just know that this child needs more before he learns he can do nothing and get by.

If he was privately assessed, what advice or recommendations did you receive with the report? Before you share the scores, my advice would be to do what you are doing here (getting more context) but also go read up on the publicly available articles on the Davidson site about advocacy and educational options for highly gifted children. Those were very helpful in educating ourselves and some were good to share in the conversation with school personnel. The first guidebook on this page is a great start. http://www.davidsongifted.org/youngscholars/Article/Davidson_Young_Scholars___Guidebooks_375.aspx

I may be wrong, but I think that GAI might be a DYS qualifying score.

Not a lot of experience so I will let others chime in.

We just did this for K and one thing that comes to mind:

- The GAI score there is the "real" IQ score in my opinion, but they may want to use FSIQ because they are not as familiar with the GAI. So you try to prepare a little one line blurb yourself about what that index is and why it is typical to substitute it for the FSIQ. In your case both are definitely high enough for any gifted cut off I've ever seen, so maybe it won't be an issue?

Definitely read up on advocacy a little first so you aren't caught off guard.

In our school they seemed to go through the process of taking the scores and filling out the paperwork for the sake of doing the paperwork. If you know what paths other similar kids have taken and what types of things the school has offered before it may help you prepare. Do you have any kind of gifted org in your area you can use to connect with other families? In our case we did find one and it really, really helped. Also talking directly to the district gifted office in addition to our local school helped us learn more about what was available.

GL

The GAI meets the Davidson criteria - have you applied? Your educational consultant there can be a great resource in explaining the scores.

FYI, it can take several weeks to get all of the processing complete before you have access to a consultant, plus you need to add a month of processing for the decision.

But yes, that GAI meets minimum qualification criteria for DYS.

Your DC's scores are good. WM and especially PS are a little lower, but not totally out of the range for a conscientious/methodical GT kiddo. Sometimes, the lower PS means something concerning, but quite often, it doesn't. In the absence of IRL concerns, I would not think too deeply about the PSI. Do you have concerns?

I agree that the GAI should be interpreted as a better indication of his cognitive capacity than the FSIQ.

I have a hard time imagining any school not qualifying him for gifted services of some sort, with either the FSIQ or GAI, unless his achievement scores are much lower. You mention a discrepancy. Are you comfortable sharing those scores with us?

Thanks for the link Connectingdots!
I just read a good bit of it and printed it out too.

I'm really hoping for DYS. I could really use the help. I'm just nervous about who to ask to be the nominator so I haven't finished applying for DYS yet.

We sought out testing bc of social issues and underachievement last year. As of now, both of those are improved, but not resolved.

The score I'm most interested in is PS. I did ask our tester if I would see issues in a highly gifted child with normal processing. She said maybe and suggested I spend our $ on educational enrichment rather than a full neuropysch eval at this point. But I still am left wonder what the cause of underchievement really is.

Anyone have this scenario going on as well?

What type of underachievement are you seeing? He's got a fairly large discrepancy in PS vs other scores, but it could be due to many *many* different reasons. If you explain what you're seeing in terms of underachievement, that might help us with ideas re what might be up.

If you have concerns or are seeing issues at school, I'd want to pursue the neuropsych eval before spending $ on educational enrichment. JMO, but if you have questions, it's better to get answers when and where you can, as soon as you can.

Best wishes,

polarbear

If by underachievement you mean not getting good grades, that can be strongly influenced by the curriculum being so easy for him that it is not worth (in his mind) the effort, voila, bad grades. In our DYS child's case, fixing the environment (end-of-year testing to see what he knew led to a two-grade SSA) led to As in that subject and far better classroom behavior.

However, if he's not understanding the material, that's a different situation and might indeed warrant further assessment.

FWIW, there can be other reasons for underachievement, that might be reflected in low achievement test scores as well as low PS score on the WISC.

polarbear