I am toying with getting a formal IQ score for my dd8, going into grade 3.
Reason being: to have more in my arsenal to present to schools for advocacy reasons.
What IQ test would you recommend?
So SharonM brings up a good point - another reason to want an individual IQ test, such as WISC with Achievement test such as WJ-ACH or WAIT is to try and predict the future - are you seeing a bright and early kid who is likely to have lots of peers in his current grade, at least once he gets to high school and the other kids mature a bit more, or a 'Thomas Jefferson'-type who is peerless, and sitting all alone, but have a better shot at peers in an older classroom.
So yes, 'giftedness' is as much a matter of the surrounding kids as it is of an individual kid. In the valley of the blind, will a one-eye'd man be King? Or considered insane? If I'm a teacher and have 29 kids who can learn from my lesson, and one standing on his head in the corner, kicking his feet, am I likely to think my lesson is the problem or that the child is the problem. Human nature says: If it works for 97% of the cases, those few 'other' cases aren't worth paying attention to - unless it's one's own child, right?
There are a few school districts in the US (Around Chicago, around DC, Connecticut around NYC) were there are enough gifted kids where the teachers are aware of the 'signs' and it doesn't matter how unusally gifted the kid is because the teachers 'get it.' But to most school systems that child in the corner just looks weird. So a child who is gifted and has no learning peers in my hometown could move to a town about an hour away and be 'bright' and have lots of learning peers. In my home town that child has 'special educational needs' and in the other town that child doesn't.
Take a look at Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual, it's the only research based look at 'will acceleration be a good thing' and guess what? To fill out the Scale, one needs IQ and Achievement data. 'Out of level' testing is a nice bonus too.
So yes, get those tests. CoGat is a good screener, but like any IQ test, a snapshot of just one day, and like any group IQ test - more likely to miss some divergent thinkers than an individual IQ test.
Peace,
Grinity
