I posted about having an agreeable and sort of overlooked 7 year old DD in the advocacy thread. Her dad and I have decided to pursue private testing so that we have better information to advocate for her with. I contacted a testing person (found her via google search) and just wanted to check whether this sounds right to you. The psychologist administers the WISC-IV. DD and I will meet with her for a few minutes and then I will leave the room (she mentioned I can stay if I wish but she advises parents do not in most cases). Testing will take 1-2 hours and I will have results the next day via email. The cost is $350. It all sounds pretty fine to me, but since you guys have tons of experience I just wanted to see what you think and if there is anything else I should be thinking about or asking the psychologist. Thank you!

Do you have achievement testing numbers? IQ alone is (IME) unlikely to impress the school, even if the numbers are sky-high.

We found a tester familiar with the gifted via the hoagies list but otherwise we did pretty much the same thing.

We tested in the morning and did not really say too much about it (the psychologist suggested just saying that DS would be "doing some activities").

I think you can only take the WISC or WPPSI once per year, so it is important to get a good night's sleep, have a good breakfast etc. to help give a child the best chance to have a good representative testing session (because you can't go back next week or next month to try again - you have top wait a year OR use a different test).

It might be worth it to see if the tester will calculate a GAI in addition to the FSIQ as relatively lower performance scores which are common in gifted kids could pull the FSIQ down.

It's two years between tests now, not one.

Make sure a good timing for the testing. If she is not a morning person, try to schedule for the afternoon etc.

Good luck :-)

I STRONGLY recommend testers on the Hoagie's list, who are familiar with testing gifted children. If they plan to give the WISC, I would also ask if they typically utilize extended norms when they are needed (Hoagies list testers are probably quite familiar with these), and when they would calculate a GAI (can be very helpful with a gifted child, who often might have lower index scores).

I agree that it is probably helpful to have ability and achievement scores for advocacy. Also, I would probably focus on and request tests the school is likely to be familiar with (those used for their G&T or accelerated class selection, for instance).

Best wishes!

One thing I'd do is ask your ped for a recommendation and also ask any other parents you know who may have also advocated through your school district. If possible, see if you can get a sense of which psychs your school district finds credible - ime, that can be every bit as important as experience testing gifted kids. We were told by our school district that they do not trust assessments by some psychs who are known (here where I live) to inflate scores to help get young children into our public school gifted program. I'd also consider testing through the school district if you haven't - that can be a good first step, it's free, and the school district staff will trust the results.

To be honest, our ds' IQ tests in and of themselves were not terribly useful when advocating at school - they were good info for us as parents to have (to know that we weren't nuts re what we thought his IQ was)... but at school they had limited utility in advocating. What worked better was achievement testing, and using the IQ as an additional data point. (Caveat - there are IQ cut-offs for gifted programs here, and we have used his private testing for part of his admissions applications for that - but private ability testing alone wasn't enough, using achievement testing, and the schools *really* preferred achievement testing and preferred achievement testing through the schools.

It's a tough call to make if you have both options (private vs school testing) - but in general, I've found private testing has given me more thorough and reliable information, but school testing is more readily accepted by the schools.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Wow, you guys are a wealth of knowledge! Thanks so much.

Re: achievement tests, would the COGAT be that? I know her school administers the COGAT to all 1st graders so she must have taken it--but we never got the results. I can contact the school and ask. (Btw: Is it typical not to automatically receive results from these kinds of tests?)

I also think they may have done the MAP at the end of the year but am not sure. My partner's children get results every year from that (same school system) but they're older.

All in all, I feel like the school gives them tests but is not forthcoming about the results. The process is opaque and they're rather secretive about it.

The COGAT score is part of her educational record-- you are entitled to it.

Some gifted kids get a good measure on COGAT, but some do not.

Depending on whether the score seems about in the right ballpark to you based on what else you know about your child, you could ask your tester about whether some other test would be useful or revealing in your case.

Whether anything further is worthwhile also depends on what you're trying to achieve through testing-- achievement testing is useful in getting school to see the need for differentiated instruction or acceleration.

The only option her school readily offers is a pull-out enrichment class in reading and one in math. Kids qualify for one or both on the basis of nomination, testing, and parent evaluation forms. What I'm trying to do with the IQ test is just get a general sense of where she seems to be. The school has been terrible at providing information about her, but I feel like once I confirm she is gifted (assuming that happens), I will feel comfortable asking that she be nominated.

Thanks--just emailed the principal to request a copy of her scores.

Oh, yogawordmom, your story sounds so familiar!

So our school looks at the CogAT testing more as an "ability test screener" for all students, to decide whether further individual (although abbreviated) IQ testing is warranted. Hopefully, your principal will respond (and keep FERPA in your back pocket), but yes, usually you should be able to see those scores. Our schools are slow to share this type of information, too.

Our schools also require separate "achievement" data in their screening process for G&T. The CogAT doesn't count as "achievement data" for us, but perhaps other schools use it differently. MAP testing is actually the achievement data our school uses.

As the always wise polarbear has suggested - YES, if the school prefers certain testers, use them. In fact, we waited for the school to do its testing (with its own school testers) and waited for all of the results to come in (the school definitely takes its time with sharing its data with parents), before we decided to pursue some additional testing (by then, we had our own questions we wanted the answers to, so the extra testing was for us - she was already in the school's program). We will probably do things differently with child #2, because I think child #1 was probably neglected a bit too long while the school went through its long process to decide whether she was eligible for their programming.

Parents need to also trust their "gut" on these things - YOU are really the expert on your child!

Let us know how it goes with the principal. BTDT!

Got the CogAT results--nothing to see here. 62nd percentile, but they also said this was a screening and not a full test. I know you guys have said the CogAT is not necessarily very reliable, but I guess this screening is what her school uses as a basis for further testing. Given that she did not score very highly, I think we're just going to go with the WISC-IV as planned.

Our district has strict cut-offs in terms of the CogAT. They claim that it's similar to an IQ test (but not exactly the same). In order to get into the gifted magnet they have to have a composite score over the 98th percentile PLUS achievement testing scores (math and/or reading) above the 98th percentile. I think I'm one of the only people who requested an alternate test, since DD didn't do well on the CogAT at all. The test that the school psych wanted to give her sounded just as bad, like all it would measure is working memory and processing speed (DD is SLOW, that's why she didn't do well on the CogAT which is timed, at least the version she took). Ultimately I took her for private testing, but then I didn't know if the school district would accept our outside results or not (luckily they did), but they also put "rules" into place for future people requesting this, for instance the IQ testing has to be from a list of approved psychologists. We have IQ testing on DS from a neuropsych who is NOT on the list (we had it done because he had a brain injury), so we are screwed in terms of DS. He is going to have to take the CogAT next year or we are going to have to pay to have outside testing from someone on the list. I guess my point is that they may or may not accept your results...it just depends on if they have strict cut-offs/rules in terms of accepting kids into gifted programming. Check and see if there is a g/t coordinator, or some sort of curriculum specialist who makes these decisions. If you just want to find out info for your own benefit and to use for advocacy, and don't need certain scores that meet eligibility criteria, it doesn't matter as much.

I think the program is fairly relaxed in terms of standards. I know there's some testing, then stuff about achievement in class (she is doing well in class), and a parent evaluation. Honestly--based on experiences I've heard from other parents in our school system and then neighboring one--I think people who ask to get their kids into it, and have the vocabulary to advocate, generally get their kids into it (I don't think that's necessarily right but seems to be how it works here). But my inner objective person really wants to base my recommendation on facts. I like information and do really badly trying to have persuasive conversations without it.