A few months back, my 7 year old was given the OLSAT along with many of her fellow second graders. Children scoring at or above the 98th percentile/132 are eligible for gifted services in our school district. My daughter did not qualify. She scored a 130 on the nonverbal section and a 117 on the verbal section. I was surprised but not surprised. I have felt for years that she is gifted but she is also my most complicated child. Nothing is ever easy with her.
While my older children have qualified for services fairly painlessly, I suspected this one was going to be different. I have kept the option of private testing in the back of my mind as something we may need to turn to.
After the OLSAT results came, I talked to both her classroom teacher and the GT teacher. The school offered to give her the Naglieri test(NNAT) to see what that might show given her nonverbal score was higher on the OLSAT. On the Naglieri, she scored a 149 and is now eligible for services. Oh, I also happen to think she might be a visual spatial learner which is a concept very new to me and does scare me a bit because it makes me worry about how she will do in a traditional classroom setting for the many years to come.
I apologize in advance if my questions sound a bit scattered by that is how my mind is working right now.
What are your thoughts on private testing at this point? I basically have what I was hoping for in the beginning. She qualifies for services in our district. It's just that seeing that NNAT score so close to the test ceiling of 150 makes me go "hmm". If her score was a 132 or 135, I would be like "great, that's wonderful" but is there more I need to learn about her? I know these school administered tests are not IQ tests.
My next questions relate to school options. As it stands, she will be placed in a cluster classroom for third grade and will be eligible for subject acceleration in math and reading(pulled out and taught by GT teacher) if that is deemed appropriate for her. I'm so confused if that is what she needs. She does read well(5th grade level) but I have no idea how because there is very little she seems to enjoy reading. She does ace her spelling tests(qualified to get the "challenge words" early on in the school year) after looking at the words once but she really isn't that great of a speller. She doesn't seem to retain information about language patterns. She is wicked fast at catching on to math concepts but she flips out(complaining, tears, anger at home) about practicing math facts. ***Note: She is very compliant and almost silent at school. Behaviour is not an issue. She comes off as being daydreamer.
Our school district does have a full-time gifted program for grades 3-5. There is one third grade class, two fourth grade, and two fifth grade. The third grade slots for this coming fall were filled by 20ish students after the OLSAT results became available. My daughter was not considered for placement at that time because she didn't have a qualifying test score. Highly qualified candidates are children with an OLSAT or NNAT score of over 140. My daughter now has this. There is a chance she can go here for fourth grade but probably little chance for third grade. My concern with this option is she is a highly, inflexible child. If she gets in, we will have her try it but it will probably be traumatic for her to change schools.
Sorry this is so rambling. Thank you to anyone who has the patience to read and decipher it.
