Hello,

My 9 years and 10 months daughter has just been tested using the WISC IV. She came out high in three of the areas and much lower, but above average, on processing speed.

I am wondering two things:

Should a GAI have been derived/what would it be?
As she reached the ceiling in two of the subtests and 18 on two others, could a higher IQ have been extrapolated?

Here are the details:

Full scale IQ 147

VCI 146
Similarities 19
Vocabulary 18
Comprehension 16

PRI 137
Block design 14
Picture concepts 16
Matrix reasoning 18

WMI 144
Digit span 19
Letter-No Sequencing 16

PRI 118
Coding 12
Symbol Search 14

Any feedback welcomed.

Thank you very much!

Yes, her GAI should have been calculated and it would be 151 and, yes, her GAI and FSIQ both might come out higher depending on how high the scores were that fed into those 18s and 19s. My dd12's profile looked similar but with all of the scores somewhat lower (high on the same three just not as high as your dd's and lower on PSI -- lower than your dd's). Like your dd, my dd's FSIQ and GAI only differed by a few points b/c the WMI was also similarly high to PRI and VCI.

eta: With your dd's scores, I'd definitely look into applying to DYS!

It's not that unusual for gifted students to have a lower PRI relative to other scores. As far as the GAI vs the full scale IQ - I'm not sure that it is needed in that the FSIQ is very high and I would suspect she'd qualify for anything you are looking at.

Thank you for those replies. Maybe I shouldn't worry about trying to get a few extra points by asking for the GAI or extended scoring. I don't know. It's just that I don't like ceilings and was hoping to get a real picture of the extent of her strengths and weaknesses.

I think that, although her processing speed is not low, it is significantly lower than the other areas and this does cause her some frustration.

I am in the UK, so I'm afraid I would not be able to join the DYS although something like that is sorely needed! Is there any international project?

Thanks again!

Unfortunately not that I know of . My dd's processing speed was, like I mentioned, lower than your dd's but technically not "low" in that it was about average. However, like your dd, it does impact her. She's more of a deep thinker than a kid who powers through everything and wants more fast. Her insights and analyses are where she really shines. School accelerated classes that rely on doing more work faster aren't the best fit for her, though.

Amyvictoria-
Hi and Welcome! Your daughter's testing came in with really unusually high scores. And it's my understanding that it is even more unusual to score that high at her "advanced" age as there isn't as much headroom on the test. I completely understand your interest in the extended scoring; there is something about having the "correct" numbers, even if they wouldn't make a difference in how you formulate your plan with respect to her education. With 2x 18 and one 19, I think the extended norms should have/ could have been used. I am not familiar enough with WISC to know if they would have made a difference to her score. I think you would need her "raw" scores to calculate them, though. (I think)

How is school going for your daughter? I hope you all have found a way to keep her challenged!

I hope you are getting lots of ideas and accumulated wisdom from reading this board. I think I spent a full 40 hour week using the search function and educating myself when I first found this site!

The GAI is 151.

Welcome amyvictoria - always good to see more UK posters here. Looking forward to hearing more about your DD. (I'm in Scotland with a DS7. He has a great school situation for now, but I'm not sure about senior school at all.)

Thank you. There were two 19s and two 18's. Does the digit span not count?

Yes I have spent a lot of time on this board since finding it too! Very interesting. My daughter could really do with meeting some like children, (although she does have some lovely friends).

School has been really up and down.

They have just had end of year testing and, despite the teacher knowing how clever she is, she has been given the same year 6 test as she got full matks on last year and the year before. It's ridiculous. (She is in year 5 in a uk school)Thankfully, they did decide not to test her in maths this year as, for the past year, the local high school have let her go up to them once a week to work on maths several years ahead. She loves it. That's the only real opportunity she has.

I didn't ask for it, but at the time of the recent IQ testing she also did achievemnet tests. She ceilinged on all of those getting adult level/16+ in reading, spelling, WISC mental arithmetic, BASB arithmetic.

Oh I wish there was DYS here! Colin's mum - glad to hear your son is well in school. I think DD9 has a lovely teacher, but that's not enough and DD goes through very unhappy phases and quite often says she wants to be like ... so and so in her class. If we were still in London I would home ed, but being in a rural area I'm not so sure it would be a good idea.

As another poster from the UK: what was the goal in testing? did you initiate it or was it the school?

[We actually don't currently live in the UK but it's looking likely we will move back there in the near future. We have IQ and achievement test results for our DD6 and she is grade skipped by three years in her current school, as well as working at university level with us in maths. But we haven't found any UK school, private or state, that has much understanding of her IQ/achievement test results. So I would be interested to hear if your results are going to be useful in developing e.g. some kind of GIEP for your DD...]

Mmmmmmm?!
When speaking to the LEA last year about options for my daughter, the supposed G&T lead said that maybe they would want IQ testing as 'proof'. We decided that if she were to be tested it should be by someone knowledgeable about gifted children. We didn't do anything for a while, but recently decided to do it privately. the LEA doesn't know yet. We don't quite know what to do with it now?

I don't know that it will make a lot of difference. The school have already said that maybe she could be put up a year. I don't see the point as she would still not be challenged academically and she would move out of a group in which she does have friends. She is probably mildy dyspraxic too(?) and her organisational skills are not that great. Difficult. I would like her to be subject accelerated in at least some subjects. Total acceleration is very rare in the UK. Maybe if it was more normal we would consider it.

My daughter does have an IEP, on paper(!), but usually not followed as it is too difficult for the teacher and (apart from the kind and interested high school head) there seems to be no money to support anything else.

It sounds like your daughter's achievements are much more extreme than my daughter's too - where would you be moving to?

Are you both aware of IGGY? My DS has not yet done any of their courses - dates have yet to work out - and there seem to be only a couple scheduled (I hope this doesn't mean they're winding down) but we've looked with interest, as it might be a way to get a bit of extra challenge and a chance to meet others a bit like them. (I understand they can be flexible with ages, btw.)

Yes I am aware of IGGY, but haven't had much luck so far. Apparently the courses are good, but expensive for us. I tried to get on to the IGGY list, and sent off all the forms with a supporting statement from the school (twice) and have followed up with an e mail (twice!) and have had no response?!

I would like DD to be signed up for the Da Vinci program for use in school, but school won't pay. Maybe with these test results we'll try again.

I can't say that grade acceleration is common where I live either but I think that some of that is b/c parents aren't aware that it is an option. I did kind of get the impression that some of our local schools could be pushed into agreeing to a skip that they didn't support based on some of what the GT coordinator at dd12's school last year said.

I did want to address your comment about it not being a way to fix the educational misfit, though. I don't think that grade skips are ever a total panacea. For my dd12 she was still many, many grades ahead of her placement in a number of subjects but it was still better than nothing. In one subject, it was the right placement and met her needs well. My dd was also dx with SPD and dyspraxia at age 7, although I'm not really sure that she has either. I think that she is just a slower more meticulous person who is very cautious. We've done better trying to accommodate and encourage the speed and give somewhat more appropriate academics.

The set group of friends in her grade is the only thing that you mention that makes me think moving her up a grade might be harder for her than my dd. My dd was already on her 3rd elementary school by the time she skipped the last year of elementary so she wasn't married to staying with friends she had known forever.

Yes, I am aware of IGGY. (Like you I am an academic.) I did hear that their courses are indeed winding down, though... DD is already doing many online courses with CTY etc and is in a reasonable school situation where we are currently located.

To answer the question of where we would move to: DH and I are academics and we have been approached by a UK university with a view to leading a new research center. There are a number of good private and state schools within the vicinity of the university involved, but none of them has experience with a six year old as advanced as our daughter. I do think we could work with at least one of the private schools in developing a reasonable program for her, but we are definitely going to have to guide them (as indeed we have been doing with her current school).

Pity, but I'm not very surprised. Ah well.
Somehow I didn't think you were going to be willing to answer the where question very precisely at this point! Well, in the unlikely event that it looks as though it might be my university [I'm far enough away subjectwise that I wouldn't have heard] feel free to PM me if you'd like to discuss schools nearby. Yes, it's probably too much to hope to find a school that has experience with children as far ahead as your daughter. DS's school (a small independent school with small classes) is working out basically because they seem to be good at treating each child as an individual and being flexible in what they expect. He's currently with age peers, though with his maths run entirely by us. I don't know whether this will continue to work, but so far it seems fine. It's really down to excellent teachers who don't have fixed ideas about what Nyos can do.

I don't think that acceleration by one year is very rare in the UK, particularly in private schools. Quite a number of my year at Cambridge had been grade skipped and entered Cambridge at 17 instead of 18, and when doing admissions (in Maths) for Cambridge it also wasn't unusual to see kids who'd been grade skipped once, even coming from state schools. Being grade skipped more than once in a UK school, and entering University more than one year younger than usual, does seem to be much more unusual. (I was in this position and there was quite some discussion about deferring my entry, gap years etc with my Cambridge college.)

We would be in a maths department, actually, so you might hear about it; the center would join a maths department with physics and astronomy. But not in Scotland: none of the Scottish universities (Edinburgh, Heriot Watt, St Andrews etc) currently has a strong enough theoretical physics profile to be attractive for us.

Yes, I had an OK school experience in a UK private school with this kind of attitude. We looked at some British schools where we currently live and were shocked at their obsession with testing and SAT levels. They wanted to use SATs as the only measure of DD. Once DD had demonstrated she could do KS2 papers, the next thing they did was give her KS3 papers, GCSE papers and so on... we just ran a mile. Her current school isn't perfect but is at least not obsessed with testing, is willing to work with us, and lets us take charge of her maths, propose enrichment activities etc.

My daughter is currently in a mixed age class, there are only 3 classes. She has always worked older children, but now she is in year 5 a lot of the children are younger than her. I remember thinking when she was 4/5 that I would like her to be accelerated, but now it doesn't seem to be the right fit. We may suggest flexi schooling as an option, the school seem to be open to this, if DD wants it.

So ...
Sorry to be boring, but -
if you were me would you go back to the tester and ask for raw scores / extended scoring / possible reissue of report or would you just leave it? (The fact that she reached the ceiling on the two 19's is already mentioned in the report).

I think I will not ask for the GAI as it is only 4 points higher.
???

Thank you!

I am more of a lurker than a poster, but I also have that "need to know" thing so I thought I would chime in. I also would be a little annoyed if my DS ceilinged and the psych never addressed extended norms in the report.

My DS ceilinged on Vocabulary and Matrix Reasoning and using extended norms, his scores increased to 21 and 20, respectively. With the extend norms, my DS's FSIQ increased 2 points and his GAI increased 4 points. This was discussed in the report the psych prepared. He also got two 18s but whether those would adjust the final numbers was not addressed in my DS�s report.

You might want to know only for your own general knowledge, but I guess I would want to know if the extended norms were used, and if so, whether they increased his scores. It could give a more accurate portrayal of her abilities and sometimes the higher numbers (although hers are already pretty high) may be striking enough to get someone (ie school system) to do something about it? If you don�t think it will, then you just have to decide if this is something you can live without knowing � as another poster said, those scores are pretty much good for any program to which you may want to apply.

and by already "pretty" high, I of course meant "really" high!

Well I did contact the tester and he said that with the up to date tests extrapolating scores is not recommended. That is not what I have read here, but he is an experienced UK tester of gifted children. I feel a bit silly, but also disappointed. I did ask if the raw scores were available, but he didn't answer that bit of the e mail. My daughter liked him, the test went well, I think the report will be useful and the school could want to contact him and I wouldn't want to be seen as pushy so maybe I should leave it. It's just that I would like it to fully reflect the extent of her strengths in the ceilinged tests???...
Thanks for all you replies.

You did it privately, so not only is it your DD's data but you are the customer. In your position I would definitely insist on getting the full data. Maybe an email that says just "Thank you for your reply. Please send me the raw scores for all subtests, for my records. Yours, amyvictoria"

I am building up to that e mail. I know it's silly, but I feel nervous!

Thank you for your advice - the raw scores are now in the post. They may make no difference at all. Even if they do point to a higher extended IQ it may not be of any further use to the schools, but I will have satisfied my curiosity!!
Would anyone here be able to work out what the extended IQ (if appropriate) would be from the raw scores?
Thankyou!

I'd bet that Dottie could work out the extended IQ for you. PM her if you don't want to post the raw scores publically.

Thank you for that. She was a great help and the scores did go up. It is frustrating that they are not in the report though and I'm not sure if anybody would understand even if I did mention extended IQs or even GAI. Do any UK posters have experience with this?