Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Assessment when curriculum has been lacking

YDS will be assessed at a reputable clinic right after he turns 6. Based on our older son's assessment, I'm thinking (but need to confirm) this will include the WISC, maybe the WIAT (sp?) and also some achievement testing. We're starting to wonder if the fact that he's not been in an enriched school environment will make the testing less valuable. ODS was so much further along, achievement wise, at that age, but he was also spending his days somewhere he could move pretty much at his own pace. He was doing multi-digit multiplication and division, knew geography, lots of science facts, etc.

YDS has been in a nice, but not differentiated K (we're recently figuring out some promised challenging work is not being provided). So while he's reading large chapter books (Big Nate, Diary of a Wimpy Kid), as well as books on whatever interests him, he's not had the opportunity yet to advance say in math like his brother had by now. (That said, he's picking up concepts like half of a number as soon as it is explained to him.)

I'm probably rambling, but the gist is, we are worried the assessment, particularly any achievement portions, won't reflect potential.

I don't think lack of exposure to enriched curriculum would matter for the IQ test. For the achievement test, from our experience, my DS7 did not have much of enrichment except several weekend classes at the CTD from NW. He only had a couple of math classes and one science class. When he took the MAP test, he was in 99% in both reading and math. We didn't really teach him much outside of school. So he was pretty much on his own.

The WISC should be minimally impacted by his educational environment. What he has had is perfectly adequate to feed his potential as far as cognitive assessment goes.

The WIAT (achievement) hypothetically could be affected, but at this age, I would strongly doubt that there will be any noticeable disadvantage due to his lack of additional instructional advancement. Consider that multiplication fact fluency will not be assessed at all, and that being able to add and subtract double digit numbers will take him above the 98th %ile in math calculations. Geography, history, and science (the so-called content areas) will not be assessed at all on either instrument.

Keep in mind that he is being compared to typical kindergartners/rising first graders, who may have 150 sight words (optimistically), and be able to do very simple single-digit addition sums to 9.

ajinlove and aeh, thank you very much! I'm feeling better. We are feeling guilty as we realize just how little he's had in the way of learning during this school year.

aeh, wow. I had no idea that he was so far outside the typical K student. Clearly, our perspective is skewed! That makes me feel pretty good about the achievement portion of the assessment.