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There does not seem to me to be any disconnect between IQ and achievement scores. Both are perfectly OK scores. You seem to be worried about hitting a ' magic number '. Since the testing did not seem to indicate a problem, what really would be the point of retesting her? Is she having a specific issue that you are trying to address ? WHY do you want to skip the JRK? You could just keep her home another year and teach anything you like. Please do not worry about test-prepping a four year old!

Hi Fobstar and welcome, hopefully you'll find a lot of useful info here on this board and the related site.

Just a few things, I'm not sure why you were wanting the gifted label. If DD is not yet at school why are you seeing a definite need to advocate for her to skip a year? I could understand if you were trying to get her into a program, however kids with your daughters iq range are exactly the ones who traditionally excel at school. You may find after she starts that the class is a great fit, or you can advocate based on what her academic ability is.

I'm not equipped to answer your first question, however there is currently another thread devoted to that very subject. As for the other 2, perhaps our resident expert can weigh in.

I'm having horror visions of a 4 year old child being exam prepped to gain a higher IQ - hopefully this is not the case. The tests are designed to test potential rather than ability so no amount of prep will make a huge difference. For eg with the object assembly - my DD scored very high on this. I think we did a couple of puzzles that week (altogether as a family - 60 p ones) prior to that she rarely played with puzzles.

My point is - let your daughter be, she may very well have underperformed if she felt there was too much pressure! I don't think you will get much in the way of tips here on how to improve as most of us a looking at tips on how to cope.

Three is very young to test, and the scores are not considered to be very reliable. I agree with what the previous poster said. I wouldn't get too focused on this now. If school isn't a good fit, you could test her again when she is in early elementary.

There is a fairly large spread of scores among the subtests, which isn't shocking in a three year old. In particular, the two subtests that comprise the VSI are 2 standard deviations apart. The two VCI subtests are closer, but still 1.3 SD apart. The main piece of perspective I would offer is that IQ scores are not all that stable before the age of 8 or 9, which means that they may go up, or even down (especially with children who were a bit hot-housed, or just come from an enriched environment, at the time of the first testing).

It is early yet to be concerned about her educational placement. Even if she is academically capable of skipping jk, one should also consider whether this would be developmentally-appropriate, socially, emotionally, and with regard to work skills. There are numerous discussions around the forum weighing these factors.

To your specific question about confidence intervals: it's about +/- six points for the FSIQ, which would indeed include the 98th %ile.

Can someone point me to the thread re: WPPSI-IV scores? I tried searching and couldn't find it.

She is actually already doing JK at a private preschool. Our school board has a calendar year cut-off and she just missed the cut-off this year having an early January birthday. I would hate for her to have to repeat JK and then do THREE years of kindergarten.\, hence the reason for hoping for acceleration. Plus, her current peers will all be in the grade above her once they go back to school board.

DS had some developmental delays and was tested at 3.5. He wasn't particularly cooperative, so that is a factor to be weighed in, but his score was like 106. Fast forward to age 6 and he had a severe head injury prompting a visit to a neuropsych. His general ability index was around 133. Now he is 7 1/2 and was tested using the CogAt and the composite was in the mid 130's, so fairly close to the WISC IV score when he was 6., although the CogAT in general seems to be a silly test, esp when it is timed. But I thought it was interesting his score was close to his WISC score. So the score he had at 3 1/2 ended up being pretty meaningless. There is a bunch of research on this (see the book Nurture Shock or google "gifted and Nurture Shock"). The scores that preschoolers earn can change a lot just a few years later, unless they are at the extreme high or low end, because kids develop unevenly and a lot has to do with the environment at that age. For instance puzzles. Some kids do them, and would therefore do well on object assembly, because they have practice. Kids who live in an enriched environment with well educated parents and books will do better with vocabulary or naming pictures. If your child learns to read practically on her own before kindergarten starts, that would be a more definite sign of giftedness, IMO. Both of mine started reading shortly after they turned 4 and were fluent readers by the time K started. I gave them a little help though, so there are some kids who are gifted who don't start to read early.

DD was close to the cut-off making her one of the oldest kids in K, and we should have started her in K early, but I didn't want to be one of "those" parents who made all kinds of false assumptions about their child. So there is something to be said for thinking of this now, in case it does end up being a good idea to accelerate, but I wouldn't put too much weight on an IQ test at this point (unless, like I said, the score is extreme which in this case it isn't). Maybe re-test right before you need to make a decision, or just start her at the age when she should go, and accelerate later if it's not a good fit.

Can she read? I don't know enough about the WJ to know if her scores mean she can. If she can, perhaps that is why you are concerned? Why did you test at this age?

ETA: FWIW, I believe one of my children would have tested higher than true ability at this age and the other, lower. Even now, at ages 10 and 6, I don't feel I have a true grasp on their full abilities!

Fobstar, I am in a very similar situation with my son's scores. I really hear what blackcat is saying about not wanting to be one of "those" parents who has false understanding about their child's abilities. It's hard when the scores are kind of borderline like this! In my case, we're trying to decide between a fully TAG school and the regular neighborhood school (assuming it has adequate math programming, since our son scored very well there).

I find myself driving myself crazy with stress about making school choices, but here's the thing--these are the kids who are frankly going to do well no matter where they go, especially with involved parents.

I saw your reply and wonder what country you are from? I can't see a scenario where a child would do 3 years of kinder.

Maybe a little more information about your area, your child's abilities (one person asked if she can read yet) and other school options would help people give you better suggestions.

However, I agree that you may just have to wait and get a more reliable score later on.

Do you have other K options?

The thing about achievement test results is that they are dependent on learned knowledge, and you're testing a very young child who's already in Junior K and it sounds like she's been exposed to some academics. A lot of the sample group of same-age kids that the achievement test is normed against likely haven't had the same level of exposure to concepts like early reading etc, so what you *might* find (or might not!) is that if she retests in a few years, when other kids are reading etc that where she falls relative to other children's scores (percentile) might dip a little bit, simply because the other kids have started to catch up with early academics.

OTOH, the WPPSI is an ability test, and less likely to be influenced by early exposure to academics, so *if* the score you had was the score she's really at (which might not be, as ash mentioned, scores aren't terribly reliable at her age and she's showing a lot of variation in subtest)... but... *if* they were an accurate snapshot of her abilities, then you'd probably see the scores land her in the same IQ percentiles when tested later on.


Since you're not in the US, I can't really help with much advice, but if you *were* in the US one thing I'd advise is that it's easier (usually) to argue for acceleration based on achievement than on IQ scores, for two reasons - teachers/etc are very skeptical of early IQ scores simply because they aren't thought to be reliable when children are so young, plus teachers in general (here, just my experience), put a lot more weight into what they see a child actually doing in terms of academics. So for us, at least, it's been easier to advocate using achievement scores rather than IQ, and I've also had friends (parents) who've been able to bypass IQ cut-offs by showing examples of achievement scores as well as examples of their child's work.

That said, I would not be so terribly eager to advance my very young child in school - unless she was absolutely begging for it. My kids are older, and honestly, no matter what grade level they've been allowed to work at, school has for the most part put boundaries on their lives because of the amount of their free time it consumes, and it never seems like it's quite "enough" (even for my child who is not technically "gifted" according to test #s. If there is one thing I wish I could do for my kids, I wish I could give them back more of their preschool years (even as older people lol!)... because that was the one time in their lives where they truly were able to let their minds just be anywhere at anytime. Even though they might not have been learning reading/writing/arithmetic in preschool, the freedom to just *think* really fostered a ton of learning!

Do you have any alternatives to repeating JK next year? Other types of school options other than acceleration?

Sending you good wishes!

polarbear

In response to some of the questions above:
- We are in Canada
- My DD can read. She's currently reading Level 8 PM Benchmark books at school, which is mid-Grade 1.

Educational options:
1) Continue in current pre-school where she can do SK next year. Her pre-school only goes up to SK, therefore, this option just delays the problem and still requires advocating for acceleration if I want her to continue at her current pace if she goes back to public school after.
2) Register her for the public school for September, but she will have to do JK unless I can successfully ask for a grade skip.

Just noticed your question about more subtests:

She did receive all the possible subtests for a three-year-old. If she had been tested a month later, at four years old, testing would have included the Fluid Reasoning and Processing Speed clusters. In my experience, a cognitively bright young four-year-old might benefit from including the Fluid Reasoning cluster, as that is where advanced abstract thinking and problem solving are most likely to be documented, but might be at a disadvantage when including the Processing Speed cluster, as fine motor development is so variable at this age. Net change in FSIQ--a wash.

I understand your dilemma, but if she is reading mid grade 1 books as a preschooler, even starting SK at the public school for next year isn't really going to do much to solve the academic mismatch. It sounds as if the current school does fairly well at meeting her needs, so if you can at all afford it, I'd leave her where she is for another year. Believe me, sometimes just postponing the problem for a year must be good enough!
It certainly gives her time to develop, gives you time to get to know her better, maybe have another round of testing (though the wppsi is of course out for two years) and may help you see a lot clearer.
I have seen testing go so many ways, from testing our two year old for color blindness, to an ASD eval, to IQ tests almost three standard deviations aoart, it's such a crapshoot...if there is an acceptable placement for SK within your reach, just take it, and then worry about what to do about first grade.

In two years, she will be old enough for the WISC-V, anyway. But if you feel strongly that testing before then will be valuable, there's always the SBV.

I would agree with taking it year by year. The available programming changes, too.

Fobstar, I'm sending you a PM.

I would not worry about rushing Things to much at your daughter's age. We did not do an evaluation until dd was 7 at her schools insistance, the scores are unstable at 3/4 years old and you don't need to do a ton of educational planning anyway. In addition, you really don't know what your daughter will need academically yet. Some very gifted children do not perform as well academically and some high average children perform exceptionally well. My experience has been that the WPPSI scores a bit higher than the WISC but it does depend on the child to some extent.