DS7 had the WISC IV shortly after his 6th birthday as a part of a neuropsych eval. He scored in the 140s for PRI but only around 114 for VCI. Fast forward 1.5 years later and he is taking above-level tests for reading/math in school, where the ceiling is really high, like a 12th grade level. Given his lowish VCI I suspected he would have trouble with higher level reading comprehension but he is scoring well above the 99th percentile. For vocabulary, the test put him at a 7th grade equivalent, meaning he is scoring like the average 7th grader. I think that his grade equivalent for all the various reading scales was about the same, around 6th-7th grade (like long passage, non-fiction, fiction, etc). But on the WISC he was in the average range for vocabulary and comprehension. I'm trying to figure out why the tests would yield different results. Obviously a reading achievement test is not an IQ test, but they ask similar things (like defining vocab words). Could it be just the format of the WISC (where kids have to give an oral answer/explanation) vs. the multiple choice version of the reading test? Anyone else experience this? DS is actually scoring higher on the reading tests (including vocabulary) than DD did at his age, and she was in the 130s for VCI on the WISC (and her reading fluency was excellent so poor decoding ability wouldn't explain it). I would love it if the WISC was wrong and he does not really have the huge gap the way I thought he did--but who knows. I'm also debating whether to allow the school to give him the CogAT. Maybe he'd actually do better on it than the WISC.

Higher achievement lower IQ is a good "problem" to have compared to higher IQ lower achievement.

Normally it wouldn't even matter but our district has rigid cut-offs/policies and they want both achievement AND IQ (if you can call a CogAT "IQ" which you really can't). And to make matters worse someone told me that they are thinking about eliminating "non-verbal" scores and just looking at verbal and math. They seem to want high-achievers, not "visual spatial learners". They don't care if kids can solve a puzzle in 5 seconds. That's not going to help in language arts or math classes (according to them). All of this is just speculation at this point, I'm trying to piece together various comments that I've heard and figure out what my options are. Luckily DS is very strong in math and has high reading achievement scores as well but I'm guessing they will want everything to "match" nicely and want a good CogAT or WISC verbal score.

Yes. Schools want high-achievers; they don't want kids who are outside the norm. It creates problems that they then have to solve or ignore.

Two things come to mind:

1. In order to receive full credit on the WISC-IV verbal subtests, you need to generate responses of sufficient specificity and complexity. On a multiple choice test, you can have an idea of the meaning of a word adequate for recognizing the correct response, without being able to produce it.

2. There are few contextualized verbal tasks on the WISC-IV, whereas the reading passages you describe would all have to be in meaningful contexts. Context and meaning often help conceptual learners.

And school doesn't use much in the way of high visual-spatial ability, especially before higher math. Although they should watch out about skipping the nonverbal cognitive scores in screening, as that's usually the one measure that keeps district TAG programs from being slammed for discriminatory practices against CLD kids.

They want everything to be nice and matchy matchy. Like the GT coordinator last year telling me that DD's WISC math score would need to match her math achievement score with both being above 98th percentile. Same with reading. They want reading achievement to match verbal on the CogAT. Luckily it was via email or she would have found me yelling "What are you talking about! You're going to pull her arithmetic score from the WISC and use that as evidence of math reasoning?!" So if they use a kids' non-verbal score from the CogAT, it's not going to "match" any achievement score. And therefore it's a problem for them and their matrix so why not just eliminate? Like i said, it's speculation at this point but I talked to someone I trust to have somewhat valid information.

Rhetorical question: What do you suppose is a better predictor of a child's success in a math class? Their performance on a measure of cognitive ability, or their performance on a measure of math achievement?

I think it depends on the level, because some kids will do well on math achievement early on, if they are ahead of the curve learning math facts, addition/subtraction, etc. That doesn't mean they will do well with higher level abstract concepts. However, at a certain point it will be extremely difficult or impossible for a kid to get achievement scores above a certain level if they don't have the cognitive ability. For instance DS scored like an average 9th-10th grader on the computerized math achievement test. I don't care how his CogAT comes back for math, a kid isn't going to be able to score that high (7 grade levels ahead?) unless they have the ability. If he didn't have the ability, the math videos on Khan Academy and Dreambox lessons wouldn't make any sense to him. DS had a higher score for math than DD's spring score (in terms of the raw score)...she is placed in pre-algebra and DS is stuck in second grade math. He has to jump over the "ability" hurdle in order to get the same opportunities. It seems nonsensical. If we allow him to take the CogAT he will probably do fine on the math section assuming I can teach him how to color in little bubbles and he doesn't space out. I have no idea about the verbal section.

Accommodations for writing responses directly in test booklet?

I don't know--I thought we had time to change his IEP but we don't have much time...they are testing much earlier than I thought. And I wouldn't even know who to email about this. The district is so dysfunctional.

Special ed director and director of district assessment.

blackcat - could another factor just be, I guess I would call it "social maturity" with the passage of 1.5 years? DS took the WISC at just-turned-8, and again two years later. He was highly resistant to reading when younger, and had only just begun reading for fun around the time of his first assessment. He also has a lot difficulty talking about emotions and how he feels about things. So we weren't much surprised when the first assessment showed "practical social reasoning" (comprehension) at 50th percentile, nor that two years of voracious reading later, it had increased to 91st. Overall, his VCI increased from 95th to 99.6th - suggesting he might have had the same results as your DS under similar circumstances (but blooming that much later!)

I see I lot of my DS in many of your posts, so I thought I'd pass this on. A lot seems to be able to change in a couple of years, especially if he was only 6 at the assessment.

Yes, I do think that he's a late bloomer in a lot of ways. Back when he was assessed in kindergarten on the WISC he was still very quiet most of the time, and I remember it was still difficult to understand him (both his speech artic. and language)--maybe because he was delayed in the first place and also because of the developmental coord. disorder.

His IEP manager is saying that he can probably take the CogAT untimed, which amazes me. The district refused to do this for DD a couple years ago, even though she has ADHD. So I had to pay for private testing.

My daughter scored >99th% for reading on the Iowa test in reading but even lower for verbal IQ on the CogAT (<100 IQ). She does not have a below average verbal IQ, period.

Based on my own experience as a child, I think that some verbal tests are poorly defined, and children can actually out-think / over-think them, to the point that they will miss questions by thinking, "I don't get it."

I know this because during my own training for standardized tests as an adult (I went back for a post-graduate degree in my thirties), I was told, "You are over-thinking this. The right answer is not exactly right. Just answer the way you think the average person would answer."

I moved from 85th% on every verbal standardized test I'd taken in my life to (I am not making this up--I could probably find the results if necessary) 99.99th%.

This is because the tests often try to determine whether you understand what others are trying to say, rather than what they actually managed to convey.

Your ability to fill in the gaps for others is a major part of some verbal IQ tests. I have no idea why this is, but it must work that way, because otherwise I could not have upped my scores so much. I also went back and took a different verbal IQ test online. It put me higher than I should have been, but still, I used to score much lower than in the math/logic area, and this put me higher.

If only I'd have known as a child that they wanted me to tell them what I thought my most average, boring teacher would say the answer is, rather than what I thought the answer really was, based on the information provided, I could have probably been a National Merit Scholar. Oh well--I got a great score for my GRE!

I looked at what is on the CogAT and if a child doesn't understand the format of the test questions, they could very well do poorly just because of that. For instance there is an analogy section with verbal items. If a child has never seen analogies, but they are expected to realize that the first two words are related, and the third and fourth words need to be related in the exact same way, they could screw up that entire section by always picking the "trick" answer. 5 minutes of practice and a child could go from scoring zero on that section to getting them all right. The CogAT website actually says that kids should be prepped and there is a study guide for teachers to use with students "to level the playing field". Ok, how does that level the playing field if only some teachers bother, and others don't? I am not sure how a WISC is formatted, but I'm guessing the same type of thing can happen, where a child doesn't really understand what is expected of them (for instance that they have to be specific in their answers). And I think also the brighter kids will over-think answers, esp. on tests like the CogAT, and get them wrong because of it. Because the "right" answer seems dumb or overly obvious to them so they try to rationalize why a different answer could be correct.

Of course, this could happen for any test, but on the WISC, a good examiner will teach the first few items, and query the rest. The CogAT, ERB, SAT/10, etc. pretty much all come with practice tests that are supposed to be used in the days to weeks before the real test--but, as you say, not everybody does as they should.

If you let your kid do a practice test of CogAT, will it invalidate your kid's assessment?

I too am so over cut scores and gifted programs. My 2E son absolutely kills the MAPs (@blackcat, my DS is also +7 years ahead and in the 99%+ on the math MAPs), both reading and math, and is accelerated 2+ years for math. So he is able to excel in the real world too, not just on standardized tests. But because his IQ tests are always wonky due to the ADHD and LD, they keep him out of the regular gifted track programs.

Best I can tell, many of these programs want the very even, quick, inside-the-box type learners. If you have a highly creative, visual-spatial and/or 2e kid, better be PG to qualify. What I have observed with some of my friends who have that type of kid, is that even though they qualified, the programs are not really set up for them. So the administrators are right about that.

I have found programs where teachers and admins are able to see my son's abilities and are willing to accelerate him as much as possible. And it has been ok. But I do get steamed that he is kept our of the gifted programs, even though he is functionally on a higher level than many of the kids actually IN the program.

So, so true. I've been through my share of gifted programs, as student and professional (I've kept my kids out of them, for various reasons), and they tend to be good for even-profile MG, but not much else.