My daughter recently took the WISC-IV and got a really wide spread in her scores. The school unfortunately thought nothing of it. Because they only recognize the FSIQ, they will not provide gifted accommodation (she missed the FSIQ cutoff, but would easily qualify if they'd look at her GAI). Even more disturbing, they seem to be ignoring the red flag raised by the wide discrepancies in her score. I understand their motivation for ignoring the high scores (they have a cap on GT enrollment), but I don't understand why they would ignore the discrepancies.

Just now I shared her scores with a psychologist outside the school system, and she immediately suggested further assessment with the Stanford-Binet. She suspects 2E and wants to explore.

So now I have two questions for all of you:

1. What will the SB5 show that the WISC-IV doesn't?

2. In your experience, will having results from another test taken outside the school assessment procedure help at all in terms of the school?
Given the school's seeming indifference about any of this, it seems to me necessary that I bring in an outside consultant. On the other hand, if they're not responsive to results from a test that they administered, why would they suddenly become responsive to someone/thing else? Plus, bringing in an outside consultant seems somehow aggressive to me, even though I don't want it to be. Has anyone else done this and had it gone well? and if so, how did you approach it?

I've not been in your shoes but just from reading others' experiences, I would first bring your concern to the school that a psych you contacted is concerned about 2E issues given the spread in scores so that you can find out if they are receptive to an outsider's opinions. Some districts have an approved list of psychs they will believe - thinking that IQ scores can be purchased I guess. If they are fine w/ the person you've spoken with, I say the more data the better if DC is willing. Now if they won't accept info from an outsider, it's your choice. IF you want the info for your own knowledge about your child, then go for it. if your school has someone they prefer, talk to that person and see what he/she makes of the WISCIV spread.

SBV could show different results. I've read that the WISCIV is for more verbal kids and SBV for more mathy kids and/or kids who have timer anxiety.

FWIW, my dd took the WISC IV twice with her IQ scores varying by more than 20 pts btwn the two administrations. Both times she came out gifted, but the first time bordering on PG and the second time just barely at MG. She also took the SB5 at the same time as the second administration of the WISC (one yr post the first admin) and came out bright (like 1 SD above the mean), but not gifted. The test administrator said that she had some very odd and divergent answers on the SB that hurt her score a lot dropping one section into the 16th percentile. On the WISC IV, the first time around her scores varied from around the 50th percentile (I don't have the results here, so I don't recall exact #s) to the 99th percentile. The second time they ranged from the 25th to the 99.9th w/in subtests.

We also had the WIAT (achievement) administered b/c that is supposed to help diagnose LDS and her scores on that and another reading achievement test were in the 98th-99th percentile on math, reading, and writing, so there is no LD according to the psych who tested her.

For the most part, we are happy with the psych and with the ruling out of LDs, but it still doesn't answer questions for us on erratic scoring and I take some exception with the note that the psych put in the report that dd is less able than her sister whose WISC score is a few points above the second administration of dd#2's WISC and that she shouldn't get any special services in school that make her stand out b/c she is self-conscious about being different.

This is, of course, just one anecdotal story, but I don't know if the SB5 is going to tell you whether your dd has LDs or give you the answer. At least for us, it left as many questions as it answered.

eta: dd also took the RIAS ability test during this same second testing process and the score for that one was not able to be calculated due to wide discrepancies btwn subtests.

mmme, maybe it would help if you reframed it from "aggressive" to "assertive." This article Assertiveness and Effective Parent Advocacy is written for parents of children with special education needs. Even though in many states, the law doesn't address the special education needs of gifted children, those needs still exist.
http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/advo.parent.sherrett.htm


http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/test.iee.steedman.htm

Our tester is no longer using the SB V for any testing because he did not like the results he was getting. He feels like the old version (SB IV) is a better measurement tool.

Sorry wish I had more details as to why the results weren't trustworthy. Maybe after our next appointment???

Nevertheless, it may be worth asking about the SB IV too.

Did you get any more details on this, SP? I've read Ruf's report (warning: PDF) "SB5 Assessment Bulletin Number 3", and she says that the gifted population in the norming sample for the SB5 had an average score of 123.7. (She cites the SB5 Interpretive Manual itself for this data.) Presumably this gifted population had an average score > 130 on some other test or tests prior, so this suggests that the SB5 might score low for gifted kids. And Ruf concludes exactly this in her report: the standard gifted categories, she says - 130 for MG and 145 for HG+ - do not apply to the SB5. Gifted cutoffs are lower on this test.

From memory I think we have some anecdotal evidence for this around here. I think I remember that Kriston's now DS8, for example, showed a supporting pattern: low(er) on SB5 at 5ish and high on WISC IV a year or two later. And perhaps JBDad's DS too? I can't remember.

Still, there seems to be a countercurrent that suggests the problem, if there is one, is in the other direction. One sometimes hears rumors of kids - especially in the 5-6 y.o. range - scoring extraordinarily high (perhaps artificially high?) on the SB5. I'm pretty sure I saw Dottie say this once, but I can't find the post. Am I mis-remembering Dottie? Were these really results for the SB4 instead of the SB5?

Anyhow, the question is what we are supposed to take away from these conflicting impressions. Are the results from the SB5 artificially low? Artificially high? Are they really just right? What kind of discontent are people feeling with the test, if any?

Or maybe just a first question to Dottie and Kriston and JBDad: am I remembering correctly what you've said?

Puzzled (as usual),

BB

My fuzziness on the SBV is that kids are scoring either very low or very high - there is no middle ground. Anecdotally, i know two boys who I bet money (and I don't gamble often) are both HG++, and both scored 130FSIQ on the SBV and it wasn't just that one subtest skewed the scoring. Both boys score nearly across the board 99.9% in achievement on WJIII. The tester for one of the boys was questionable (school did the test) and the other tester was a gradstudent being overseen by psych so I don't know how much that factored into it. OH, and both boys are very HG+ in math and SBV is reportedly better for mathy kids.

SB5 has similar scoring to the WISCIV FSIQvsGAi due to the low scoring by previously identified gifted kids.

All this ambigiuity and on top of that, the lower ceilings...schools look at IQ scores and laugh. 140? Ha Ha Ha we've had plenty of kids w/ a 140. 150? NO problem - plenty of kids just like him. But my impression is they are confusing the scores w/ the old SB-LM and scores in the 180s-200.

With the priviso, I know little about testing!

The tester that we used said something like 6 year olds tend to do the best on SB5. Still she only has less than handful in the 150s on the SB5 across all ages.

When you consider the shape of the tail, it means to me that any line drawn up in 'tail land' is such that there are 2 'hair's breath' of difference kids sitting on the sad side of the line for every 'skin of their teeth' child on the happy side. AND when you consider that most of the kids in the tail are in the 'skin of their teeth' region, not the upper reaches, that is a lot of sad faces! And a lot of teachers shaking their heads!

So, my solution? There have to be a few different 'gifted programs' so that there are NO CHILDREN who aren't getting their special educational needs met.

It might look like this:
For the top 10%: School sponsered contests and activities such as Odessey of the Mind. Self selected. Lots of afterschool activities.

For the top 7-4%: Subject Grouping within a grade level.
For the top 3-2%: Freely given subject acceleration into the gifted group in a higher grades. Use Accomidations freely, so a child who is ready for 5th grade math in K, but doesn't have the handwriting skills can still participate in some reasonable way.
For the top 1%: District wide Self Contained classroom.

OK, this may not be perfect, but its cheap, and it would provide a way to met everyone needs. We could stop spending money on assessment to prove that kids are gifted, and just let kids request what they think they might like. We could teach the character trait of flexibility and self knowledge, and being willing to try things that might now work.

It just seems so obvious to me. I must be insane. Oh well.
Grimity

I know of 2 districts who do just that Grinity! They have 3 tiers of *giftedness* each with it's own accommodations.

hi mmme and all,
my DS7 had a 15 point scatter (from 4 to 19) on the WISC IV.. and we've looked into doing the SB5 also.. For DS the weakness came in the processing speed subtests, which isn't that unusual for GT kids.. though not usually to the extreme of my DS..So it would be interesting to know which subtests were low.

also, does anyone know if a child can be re-tested on a single subtest just to see if there was some other factor that contributed to the low score? and then the score adjusted? or would that be invalid because they would have done it twice??

my son's 4 on coding just bothers me so much because he "recreationally" decodes things really well- like the code in the back of the Graham Baese book "Enigma" which he did very quickly..

irene

Without giving too much detail, Coding on the WISC and WPPSI is not really the same as decoding a code. There is no meaningful content.

I know San Diego has a multi-tiered approach as well. The highest go to self-contained classes. The level below that is pulled-out for subject acceleration. The level below that is enrichment/grouping w/ in the classroom.

This makes me happy : ) I am hopeful that DS's scores were slightly inflated. It will be interesting to see if they go down in time.

That stinks. My DH told me that growing up there was a girl whose parents wanted her in the TAG (talented and gifted) program. She was tested like 3 times until finally they got sick of the parents bothering them about it and just let her in even though she didn't meet the criteria. Maybe she was close, you never know....but DH says he really didn't think so at all. It's just sad to see some parents that are kinda crazy like that. I just don't get it.

Like mentioned above, coding is not decoding things. It has more to do with the ability to visually scan things quickly. While my dds were avg in terms of processing speed which was much lower than their scores on the VCI and PRI (and WMI for dd#1), they were right around avg. If his processing speed score was well below avg with the other scores falling well above, I'd take a look at anxiety or vision issues (eyes working together, overall vision, etc.).

Oh MON! I'm so sorry to hear that. The watering down would have to be eliminated, in my pretend perfect world. And the parents who have IQ scores would be welcomed to make placement decisions for the kids who are quieter, or slow to warm up.

I'm glad to hear that this sort of thing works in some districts!

Grimity

Found this interview with Gale Roid, one of the authors of SB-V:
Interview with Gale Roid

The interview does not focus on GT, but does provide an interesting "insider" perspective to the SB-V in particular and IQ testing in general.

Thanks for the link. What I found most interesting was his quote:

I think that important issues of character, common sense, wisdom, artistic talents, and other abilities get put aside.

What I am thinking with my plan of horizontal diversificaton on the education. Clearly DD4 (almost 5) did the her K curriculum two years ago in her Montessori. I am hoping with piano and Mandarin, she is being challenged in her knowledge bank. And I think about all the other things she is absorbing. So is the pace of math and reading as relevant, if she is learning social skills, religion and the role it plays in society (she is with the Jesuits) and also what is going on economically. We do talk about it. As she sees more homeless people living on the streets and her teacher mentions their blazers cost $65 and they need to take care of them. We talk about money, work and the ability to get things.

It is nice the that they can absorb knowledge. But what is the balance with general life, street smarts and common sense type of skills?

Ren

This interesting as the tester who we used, who I think fairly recognizable and well known testing circles, told me that she had seen only less than a handful of children score at 150 + on SB5 and only one five year old.

Dont worry Dottie, I wasnt personally offended!

I really was just throwing out into cyberspace, another opinion! I think, like you, my dd's tester is getting national as well as international clients, so I presume her results have some validity? That is why, I mentioned it.

In the case, of my own dd, I really feel that as her WIAT was done based on first grade norms, before she was 5.5 and she hit many ceilings, plus her SB5 results, make me think, that two tests positively reflect each other. Also I think in real life, my dd academically does come across as the kind of kid that you would expect to have these kind of numbers.

So, I am cool and also at the end of the day, I do also think, once we are near the end of the spectrum, these tests are not exactly perfect and probably all a bit hazy.