Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Question regarding KTEA-III

Hi! Long time lurker, first time poster. I have really learned a lot from reading the posts and I am constantly amazed at the depth of knowledge and willingness to help displayed by everyone in this forum. What a fantastic community you have built.

I have a quick question that I hope someone can address. My DS8 just finished 2nd grade and is currently undergoing private gifted testing at our local university.

I was informed that they wanted to break it up into two sessions as to not overwhelm him given the length of time (7 hours) and sustained attention it would require.

The first session was scheduled to be the Achievement Testing, along with a quick Fine Motor assessment (which would help the psychologist determine the appropriate IQ test to use), and the second session would consist of the actual IQ test.

We had our first session today which lasted 3.5 hours as planned. At the end of the session, the psychologist informed me that we were going to need to return for an additional session because they had barely made it halfway through the KTEA 3. I assumed DS8 might have had attention span issues contributing to the lag but according the tester he was on task but he "maxed out" (?) on math and reading components which created the delay. She vaguely referenced that he was working at a high school level in these areas. This is my first experience with this process so I am feeling a little bit clueless about what this means. I assume the more answers correct, the longer the test takes but how high does it actually go? The little bit of research that I have done for the KTEA seemed to indicate that it was a relatively short compared to others. Is it normal to require two separate 3.5 sessions to complete this particular achievement test?

In the end, what kind of data will the KTEA provide?

Thanks in advance for your help

No, it is not "normal", but I don't believe we are discussing a neurotypical child, are we?

There are 19 possible subtests on the KTEA-3, of which a second grader is eligible to take 18. 6 are required for the core battery. The original estimate of 3.5 hours suggests that the plan was to administer many of the suppolementary subtests. It may be both that your DS was administered more supplementary subtests than you were expecting, and that he took more items than typical to trigger discontinue rules. Consider that, if he did not reach a hard ceiling in both core math subtests, then he completed 80+ items in math computation, and about 70 in math concepts (about three times typical). If the same thing happened in reading comprehension, he answered roughly 3-4 times as many questions as the norm. Between those three subtests, that would be good for easily an additional 1.5-2 hours over expectations.

The KTEA is a high-quality norm-referenced achievement test, with current norms, that should give you a good sense of where your DS's academic skills stand in comparison with a nationally-representative sample of age peers. Although you may receive grade-equivalent information, those should be viewed with extreme caution. The value of norm-referenced testing is in standing versus the peers in the standardization group, which in this case is age-peers (eight-year-olds) and grade-peers (spring second graders), not comparisons with students of vastly different ages or grades.

In combination with the cognitive testing, there should be data that clarifies how his rate of learning and his actual academic acquisition compare to others and to himself.

I am sorry for the delay in my response, we have been out of town. Thank you so much for your detailed response, aeh. This was very helpful in understanding a little more about this particular aspect of the testing process. I was informed that there are four more subscales left to complete in the achievement portion, and to go ahead and plan on another 3 hours.

To your earlier point, you are correct; my little guy is definitely not a neurotypical child. However, I am unsure if he actually meets the traditional definition of gifted or not. I sincerely hope the testing we are doing will help answer some of our questions because we are stuck in this murky gray area right now that is incredibly frustrating.

Our situation is a little complicated because DS8 has a diagnosis of ASD and given his natural tendency for concrete thinking and literal interpretations, I am unsure if the cognitive portion of the testing is actually going to provide an accurate assessment of his capabilities.

In addition, he struggles with a fine motor delay and a rather extreme tendency for perfectionism so timed writing or subtests like block design pose a significant challenge.

I was informed that DS is supposed to receive a fine motor test to determine the extent of this delay before they formally select an IQ test. Do you happen to have any opinion on which cognitive test tends to be the most effective for 2e kiddos with similar challenges?

All of the standard comprehensive cognitive assessments have some motor component to them. The NNAT, TONI, CTONI, and Leiter all have relatively minor motor demands, but are hardly comprehensive instruments (the name of the CTONI notwithstanding). I would say that selecting an instrument that has a lighter weight for timed motor tasks would be preferred.

The Stanford-Binet V, though beginning to show its age, does have few timed tasks on it (there is no processing speed composite), and no pencil/paper tasks.

The WJIV COG has no manipulative tasks in it, but does have timed pencil/paper subtests in the core; the WJ family also has a history of unusually low overall ability numbers in children who perform discrepantly low on the processing speed tasks. This latest revision does have an alternate composite score somewhat comparable to the Wechsler GAI, which does not include the cognitive efficiency clusters (working memory and processing speed, the latter of which is likely where fine motor deficits would impact). You might have to request that they include this version of the scoring in the analysis, though, as not every evaluator is accustomed to using this new cluster score. (Gf-Gc Composite, includes only Comprehension-Knowledge and Fluid Reasoning Clusters.)

The WISC-V includes both timing and manipulatives, even in the GAI (which does not include working memory and processing speed), but, among the GAI contributors, probably will result in possible low estimates only on Block Design, which is half of the visual spatial index, but the one included in the GAI and FSIQ. I think it provides a little more information on different aspects of reasoning than the WJIV Gf-Gc cluster.

The KABC-II also has one core subtest at this age that includes manipulatives (and another optional subtest that involves hand motions)--also half of the visual-spatial cluster. No fine motor speed cluster.

From a max number/access standpoint, it makes sense, of course, to select the instrument which is least affected by his relative weaknesses. From a clinical interpretation standpoint, however, it may well be more informative to administer an instrument which allows you to compare his motor-involved and motor-reduced performance, such as the WISC-V or KABC-II.

The WISC-V and WJIV are also modern instruments, with current norms, while the KABC-II is 12 years old, and the SBV is 13 years old.

As the parent of a 2e ds with fine motor challenges, unless you have some reason to need to get the highest ability score possible, I'd recommend going with a test such as the WISC that includes a few subtests that rely on fine motor output (timed and untimed). The thing that's been ultimately the most valuable for us out of ability testing wasn't the actual total "IQ number", but instead seeing the spread in subtest scores, relating discrepancies back to where we saw our ds struggling, and using that knowledge for further testing and eventually a plan for accommodations that ultimately allowed ds to be able to work in academics to his full intellectual ability. We had a few struggles in elementary school explaining that the FSIQ (WISC) wasn't valid and what the GAI (WISC) represented, but awareness of gaps in abilities, as well as the concept of 2e, seems to be spreading. As long as *you* understand what's going on with your child, you can advocate successfully using "spikey" data.


FWIW, until our ds was diagnosed with DCD and dysgraphia, we thought he was an extreme perfectionist because of the way he approached his academic work. We (parents) were *soooo* wrong about that! It's not always easy to tease apart what's up with a child who's 8 years old - but having a test that was able to illustrate the difference in ability scores when using fine motor tasks vs not, timed vs not etc, helped point his neuropsych in a direction for a small bit of further testing, which led to an accurate diagnosis, which led to accommodations and... perfectionism really wasn't the issue at all. If you see perfectionism in other areas of life that don't call on academic and fine motor skills, then it probably is really perfectionism... but if you're seeing it when he's tasked with a fine motor challenge or in other academic situations, it's possible what looks like perfectionism is related to some other type of challenge.

Best wishes,

polarbear