Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WPPSI at age 5.5 for possibly HG+ kiddo?

Hi everyone,
My son (5.5) started public K this fall and after getting to know him a bit, the school is requesting to proceed with a full gifted evaluation. They normally hold off on this until at least 2nd grade unless the parent requests it, but apparently my son looks pretty exceptional to them. The purpose of the testing would be to develop a gifted IEP for him.

The testing would involve, among many other things, an IQ test, and because he is not yet six the psychologist said they would use the WPPSI. I am concerned about this. I had read before that for highly gifted kiddos, ceiling effects often come into play with the WPPSI. Is this likely with a 5.5 year old, assuming that he actually is HG+? If so, is there another test that could be used that would give him more headroom? We would like to be able to apply to DYS, and I'm wondering if it's even possible to score 145+ on that test at his age? On the other hand, he may have qualifying achievement scores regardless (we do have some existing data suggestive of this).

What would you do? We could just request holding off on the testing for 6 more months, but our son is already showing signs of being unhappy and bored in school...

The usual advice is to wait until 6 and use the WISC as a HG 5.5 year old will have ceiling issues.

Alternatively mine were tested using the WJ cognitive. If he tests now and gets a lower score because of the ceiling it won't help things.

The usual advice is to wait until 6 and use the WISC as a HG 5.5 year old will have ceiling issues.

My thought on testing now or waiting mostly concerns the function of the testing at this time, not the ceiling. The school district appears to be expediting access to GT services (by two years!) contingent on testing him now. Waiting six months on the expectation of a more robust score on the WISC also means waiting over six months (which takes you to around May of next year--the end of the school year) before accessing GT services. In the intervening time, there is a risk that his first formal school experience becomes irretrievably tainted with negative emotions, due to the lack of access to offered services.

And FWIW, if he's a kid for which ceiling effects are a real concern, then there is a good chance that he will be in that 145+ range anyway. Also, nothing stops you from having him re-tested after his sixth birthday. It's not the same test, so although I would prefer to wait at least a year or two in-between, it's not technically an invalidating retest.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I had similar thoughts, aeh. In a way it doesn't matter whether the score is accurate as long as it is high enough to qualify him for services. We have all kinds of confusing behaviors going on right now and I'd love to be able to apply to DYS to have access to a family consultant, but getting the school situation figured out is even more important.

On a good note, he is being accelerated into first grade math starting next week even *without* completing the testing (this was based on curriculum based assessment done over the past week by the GT teacher). Maybe I should push the school a bit on why such a lengthy assessment needs to be done right away, when he is still a very young child who tires easily during testing, if they are willing to accelerate him based on his subject matter knowledge alone? Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to wait a few more months in that case.

However, is there another test we could request that would *not* have ceiling issues? I don't know if the school district has another test on hand, but if I knew what to ask for, I could ask.

As puffin has mentioned, the WJIV has fewer ceiling issues, but the reliability data for the 5-year-old age-group aren't as good as for older age brackets. So you just trade one psychometric flaw for another. The SB5 also has fewer ceiling issues, but it's old. Also, sometimes examiners give the SB5 Early edition (restricted to younger items and norms) to this age group, which has massive ceiling issues, and you can't necessarily tell from the report. Another possibility is the DAS-II, which allows for out-of-level (but properly normed) testing using the school-age battery for five-year-olds. That allows for a pretty generous ceiling, as the school-age battery is designed for through age 17-11. It's on the older side, too, but not as old as the SB5. But this is the least popular of the tests I've listed, so it may not be available in your district.

I think I'd go with the DAS-II out-of-level school-age battery, if all options were available.

Wait. There're two editions of SB5? I can't see from my kid's results which one of the SB5s was used. She hit 19 on one of the subtests and had just turned 5. Can't decide if it'd be worth further testing. We're fine with what we have, but if there's an issue on the test she took I'd be interested. Just about all the other subtests were 17-18, etc

If she hit 19 and had 17s and 18s, then she probably had the full-range edition. I wouldn't worry about it in your case.

Ha, I had to laugh at the subject line for this question. I happen to have a kid exactly your kid's age who did manage to score 145+ on the WPPSI-IV when she took it on Tuesday. So, it is possible - living proof! But ceiling issues were definitely in effect - she scored 19s on many of the subscores, leaving me wondering how much her score actually captured her abilities. I didn't need her score urgently for anything and in retrospect kind of wish we'd waited till she was old enough to take a test with more score headroom.