Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Gifted / 2e? Conflicting CogAT + WISC, MAP

Hi all. I've been struggling for a few months with trying on the idea of my son being gifted. This will likely be a long post, and I sincerely appreciate any readers.

My son (just turned 8) exhibited early signs of giftedness (pretty much every indication that you read about being common in the early development of gifted kids, except that he wasn't an early or self-taught reader... VERY early on all major milestones, incredible vocab with full-sentences by 15mo, etc.) He has always been super intense. His tantrums were off-the-charts.

While his temper / anger issues were somewhat problematic at home (and almost always due to his frustration at not being able to do something), the real problems started when he went to full-day kindergarten. Because he wasn't reading, I didn't really think of him as gifted at that time. I'm supposedly gifted, but I taught myself to read at 2.5 and was always very verbal, whereas my son never showed any interest in the sorts of things I was advanced at, so I didn't recognize his giftedness, (assuming it's there). He's very visual-spatial. Anyhow, kindergarten brought absolutely explosive, aggressive behaviors towards teachers. He was diagnosed with GAD and ODD. He got an IEP and BIP, and was removed from the gen ed setting almost exclusively. He spent almost all day in a special ed room and had to gradually work his way back into the main classroom in a scaffolded way. At the beginning of his kindergarten year, he had an WISC-V administered as part of a psychological eval, but it was given by someone who definitely didn't specialize in testing 2e/gifted kids. Our son was defiant and non-engaged at many times throughout the test, but he completed it and we were given his scores. His FSIQ was only 108. There were no big spreads in the subtest scores, except for him getting a 132 / 98th percentile on the Visual Spatial Scale. The tester did not even mention that to us as something to watch or something interesting when she gave us the results. It was just kind of like "so there's some strength in this 1 little area... moving on..." If I had suspected giftedness before that point, that IQ test result killed it. IQ is the be-all, end-all of diagnosis, so ...

1st grade seemed to start off better - he was integrated for about 70% of his day at that point, and then the wheels fell off. His aggression was worse than we'd ever seen before. He was frequently blocked in with tall PE mats and we'd get the seclusion/restraint paperwork sent home often. He refused to set foot in the gen ed room and therefore spent his whole day in SPED. Silly me had assumed that work from the main classroom would be brought to SPED and taught to him there, but it turns out that none of that was happening. For a period of about 3 months, they literally taught him NOTHING, outside of his IEP 1:1 instruction in handwriting and behavior. I was livid when I found out that he'd been stuck doing busy work all day.

Towards the end of last year (1st grade), he started telling me the answers of double and triple digit addition that he did in his head, and showed an understanding of negative numbers. I asked his SPED teacher if she was teaching that to him (that's when I found out he'd not been learning aaaanything new in math!), and she said no. When I told her what he was doing at home, she brought in the GT teacher to meet him and see what she thought.

As soon as the GT teacher came into the picture, everything changed for the better. She did some activities with him in her room and reported back that he flew through some stuff she usually gives to 4th and 5th graders (she typically only works with 4th and 5th grade as kids are ID'd at the end of 3rd in our district). She was acting like she'd found a diamond in the rough. The impression we got from her is that DS7 was definitely gifted, not even a question. She administered the CogAT to him (Form 6, Level A = a bit above level for a 1st grader) individually and split up the testing over many days, ceasing testing whenever she could tell he was becoming anxious, tired, or frustrated. Whereas a normal CogAT might only take 90 min, my son took it in little chunks over 5 or 6 days. She also scribed for him, as handwriting is such an issue for him that we suspect dysgraphia. She assured us that he couldn't fake his way to the high scores he got. His CogAT results were as follows:
Quant SAS 144 (Raw 59, USS 232)
Non-Verbal SAS 132 (Raw 61, USS 217)
Verbal SAS 118 (Raw 53, USS 184)

This blew our minds as his WISC-V definitely didn't indicate giftedness. We are so blessed with our school being 2e-friendly and very amenable to grade-skipping. On the basis of his CogAT, *THEY* advocated for him to have a grade-skip plus extra subject acceleration. So he's a 3rd grader now, having skipped 2nd completely, and then he finished up 3rd grade math in the 1st 2 months of this year (1:1 with the GT teacher) and is now doing 4th grade math. Meanwhile, he is still fairly behind on reading, and writing remains a huge issue. We just got the results from his fall MAP testing as well - in Math, he got 225 (99th+ percentile) and, in reading, 189 (53rd).

I spent all summer reading up on giftedness, and learned SO much. I was just garden-variety gifted, a teacher and parent-pleaser, auditory-sequential learner. I had no idea that giftedness can come with a whole bag of other not-so-lovely issues like OEs, anxiety, behavior problems, LDs, etc. Everything I read made me feel like things were finally clicking into place, that giftedness made sense as a new lens through which to view my son. But I just can't get over that WISC from a couple years ago. I feel like I'm still not allowing myself to think of my son as gifted, because of it. The CogAT is NOT a real IQ test; I've read that over and over.

We're on the waiting list at Belin-Blank here in Iowa to get a 2e assessment. I'm excited to maybe get some more definitive answers, but I'm also terrified. If he doesn't test in the gifted range, I once again will be rudderless. It's not that I 'need' him to be gifted to fulfill some parental fantasy; it's just that having a cohesive lens by which to view him is so seductive. If he's not gifted, then what the heck explains all the other everything?! I know Belin-Blank is known for their 2e work, and I guess we are in as good of hands as we could be, but my son does not do well with lengthy testing, in clinical settings. If we could get an IQ test administered like his GT teacher did with the CogAT (sitting on a comfy couch with dim lighting, broken into many days of testing), I'd be able to trust the process more. But Belin-Blank can't/won't do that, so I just don't know if they'll be able to get our son's buy-in.

Wow, this really got long. Sorry! I don't even know what I'm really asking here. I guess, if you were me, would you think the CogAT / MAP scores sufficient to indicate giftedness? Do you have any advice about the IQ re-testing? Anyone been to Belin-Blank and been happy with them, specifically in terms of their accommodations? If the re-test scores are still just average (and I know to look at more than just the FSIQ!), it'll kind of stink to share those with the school... they're the ones who recommended we go to Belin-Blank and they know we're on the waiting list, so it'll be pretty conspicuous if we get him tested and don't release the results (i.e., they'll know the scores must be low if they don't see them!). I dunno. I'm just stressing! Thank you for reading.

Welcome!

First of all, you already have IQ scores that indicate that your child is likely 2e gifted/LD. In order for him to have a full scale in the average range, with visual spatial in the GT range, his other scores have to have been markedly discrepant. That doesn't take away the strength of his visual spatial skills. And his CogAT is generally consistent with the WISC-V, considering the kinds of tasks that are administered in the respective tests, and also making some small allowances for his more positive testing experience.

I'm guessing he also had a lower PSI, based on your note about IEP-mandated handwriting/OT interventions, and delays in written expression, which suggests a second reason the FSIQ might not have been the optimal estimate of his overall ability.

It still seems like a good idea to proceed with the BB 2e eval, as this round might be more accurate, based on his age, where he is behaviorally, and the better instructional match that he's experienced more recently. And a skilled clinician knows to interpret the data in the light of the whole child, and not the other way around.

aeh: Thanks so much for your reply!


Really? I'm looking at his scores and I don't see anything special, but I know you're an expert on this stuff! Here's the full list of scores:

- Verbal Comprehension: Composite Score 98, percentile rank 45, Average.
Similarities scaled score 11, Vocabulary 8 (anyone that knows my son would find that Vocab score mind bogglingly low.)
- Visual Spatial: Composite Score 132, percentile rank 98, Extremely High
Block Design scaled score 16, Visual Puzzles 15
- Fluid Reasoning: Composite Score 112, percentile rank 79, High Average
Matrix Reasoning scaled score 11; Figure Weights 13
- Working Memory: Composite Score 97, percentile rank 42, Average
Digit Span scaled score 9; Picture Span 10
- Processing Speed: Composite Score 86, percentile rank 18, Low Average
Coding scaled score 10; Symbol Search 5 (In the comments, the tester noted that DS gave up during Symbol Search and just wanted to be finished so he randomly started circling answers without even really looking at the questions.)

FSIQ 108, percentile rank 70, Average.

Hopefully that helps show you what I mean about nothing really standing out except for the Visual Spatial area, and even then, he wasn't scoring 18s or 19s on those subtests.

He had just turned 6 at the time of this test, though, and as you said, he is in a very different place now, behaviorally and developmentally. We'll stay on the BB wait list regardless, but I will be a little bit of a stressball about it until the results come in.

I re-read my OP and I guess I should walk back a couple things I said. I'm not "supposedly" gifted - I was privately tested as a child and *did* score in the GT range. It's just that I have read so much about giftedness lately with regards to my son, and I never experienced many of the issues (OEs, extra sensitivities / sensory stuff) that seem so common with giftedness. Also, when I said that I was "garden-variety gifted", I think that could be a little offensive to some people because I've heard some say "if you've met 1 gifted child, you've met.. 1 gifted child" ... I meant that I was not so extraordinary as a child, was a people-pleaser, etc. I certainly didn't have the **intensity** my son has. Anyway, just thought I'd clarify a little.

Your DC's cognitive scores don't have to be 18s or 19s to mean GT. Index scores above 130 are the standard threshold for GT, although I will say that visual spatial giftedness is probably the least appreciated and most misunderstood, especially in elementary school, where the focus of academics is very much on language (even the math is essentially language, as it's mostly the grammar of arithmetic, rather than higher-level reasoning and problem-solving). If you've been lurking here for a bit, you may have heard me say that this kind of profile often doesn't come into its own academically until much later, in high school or even after.

His other index scores are 20-46 points (1.3 to 3 SDs) lower than his VS strength, which is entirely consistent with a 2e profile, even if you qualify the Symbol Search score as a likely low estimate. (Though I tend to view all behavior as meaningful. There are obvious interpretations of the low SS score, and then there are other interpretations. In particular, very bright individuals not uncommonly mask deficits with behavior; IOW, "I'd rather look like defiant, like I choose not to or don't care, than look incapable.") You're still looking at about a 2 SD difference between strength area and nearly all other areas. I bet if they had done Arithmetic too, to obtain a Quantitative Reasoning Index, they would have found a strength in mathematical thinking, as well (based on the Figure Weights score and your anecdotal reports of his current mental math skills). One hopes Belin-Blank will do so.

Nor does every GT learner have noticeable or disruptive OEs. (That's actually still a somewhat controversial area of GT studies, inconsistently supported by the data.) And many here have realized, on reflection, that "extraordinary" is very much context-dependent, by definition. In certain communities, I expect you would have most certainly been considered extraordinary. And at a PG gathering, some of the exceptionally bright learners attached to this forum wouldn't be considered extraordinary.

Perhaps, consider yourself blessed not to have had many of the issues that accompany the GT experience for others. (As an analogy, just because it's developmentally-expected for adolescents to have a certain level of conflict with their parental figures over autonomy doesn't mean that a parent-child relationship that navigates adolescence with affection, grace, and mutual understanding is somehow flawed!)

Returning to your DC: his VCI was average, but you appear to have reports and observations about his vocabulary which are discrepant. It is possible that this is simply another example of small-child-inconsistent-testability, but his intra-Index scores are so consistent that I'm not sure I can fully buy that. I wonder a bit if there might be something else, perhaps a subtle expressive language delay (despite meeting some early language milestones), even beyond the difference between language and visual spatial thinking skills documented in the existing testing, as often the behaviors you describe are a response to a gap between thinking and communication skills (this is, of course, a big part of why NT and GT toddlers alike are known to throw tantrums). I would hope that Belin-Blank includes speech and language testing in their evaluation. Even with excellent or advanced vocabulary skills, there is a huge difference between being able to accurately use vocabulary in context, and being able to summon the expressive language to define vocabulary in isolation.

The fsiq is not really valid with those scores. Once again I am amazed at the differences between the US and the NZ system - you seem to have a school the concurrently does much worse and much better. I hope things go well and it sounds as if you have some people on your son's side.

aeh: Thank you so much for your thoughtful replies. My husband and I both *loved* what you said about early math being essentially language (had never thought of it that way before, but now we'll never forget it), and how VS learners often don't come into their own, academically, until much later. That certainly describes my husband's experience.

puffin: I don't think the GAI would have been any higher, or I assume we would have been given it, but I agree that the FSIQ really doesn't say anything about my son's strengths. You're totally right that we've had horrible and fantastic experiences at the same school. Ever since they discovered that DS is likely 2e, everything's been great, but it's unfortunate that he could still be sitting in a SPED classroom, miserable, if not for him suddenly demanding a closer look. We're kind of upset looking back on everything. Every single IEP meeting we ever had would begin with the other team members telling random cute anecdotes about advanced stuff DS said, or crazy vocabulary words he used, that in retrospect were big blinking neon signs that no one paid any attention to. We feel a lot of guilt as his parents, that we should have pushed for the school to recognize his strengths sooner, but his behavior was so bad that we likened it to a fire that had to be put out before anything else could be dealt with. In taking that stance, we just extended the amount of time the house was burning. Besides having so much personal doubt due to that first WISC, we also knew that the school didn't test for inclusion into their GT program until the end of 3rd grade, so I figured that, if he was in fact gifted, hopefully we'd get his behavior under control by then and his strengths would eventually show themselves. I'd assumed the school would have nothing for him until that ID process anyhow. If we had waited that long to get him help and appropriately challenging work, I shudder to think at how much more we would have struggled with his behavior. I'm just so glad we're on a better path now.

It's also super difficult to wait for our upcoming testing / results!

ASD is not uncommonly misdiagnosed as ODD in young children with good verbal skills, especially boys. And IQ tests were largely normed on neurotypicals, so they often underestimate ability in children with ASD. So that’s a consideration. Hopefully B.B. will help to figure it all out. The good news is, it sounds like the school has been very helpful! That’s huge.

ODD seems to be a sort of shrug your shoulders and walk away diagnosis. It seems to describe the behaviour without looking into causes etc.

Testing - wondering if my last post got lost or if it's still sitting in mod purgatory?