Hello,
This is my first time posting and i wanted to ask about test results and grade skipping. My son has just skipped from grade 1 to grade 3. We are in Australia so he has only stared in his new class about 2 weeks ago and is in a trial phase (so we will assess at the end of term one). We based the grade skip on the school's WISC testing of our son and his achievement tests in class. During this decision i have been trying to look at the evidence for grade skipping and most of it uses terms like moderately, highly etc gifted. I could care less what level of giftedness my son has but i would like to know when i look at these studies which group he falls into. We were never 'allowed' to have the school results and only had graphs showing where he was on the bell curve. As a scientist i found this very difficult. I like to know numbers it is in my nature. What did come from the school testing was that he scored very high on the verbal comprehension (at least top 0.1%) and in the top percent or couple of percent for all the others. Based on this i guess i thought perhaps (but only really guessing) he was highly gifted and thus in most studies this makes him a candidate for acceleration. From what i have seen it is the highly gifted students that are often good candidates for grade acceleration. Is that correct?
To try and help us make a decision we decided to have him tested independently and the testers used the SB-5. We had preliminary results which supported our decision but now have the full results. I am trying to understand what they mean and for my purposes of understanding the best educational approaches for him, what group he might fit into.
This is where is gets very confusing. As suggested here, i have gone to the Hoagies site where they have a useful comparison table for the different tests and based on this he would be highly gifted but on the Gifted minds site he would be gifted. Can anyone give me any guidance on how i should think about this? The SB5 test seems to produce a lower number than many of the other tests so i am not sure whether it is useful for me to look at sites where they don't specify the test but will divide up into levels of giftedness based on IQ number.
I guess the results make me worry that perhaps it was unnecessary to accelerate him (perhaps i am also thinking this as he is still struggling a little to fit in socially). As i said i am scientist and i want to look at the evidence and this confusion makes it difficult.
I have posted the results below in case any one has some thoughts about them and what they might mean for what he needs educationally.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts,
E.
Percentile Rank
Fluid Reasoning 135 99th
Knowledge 143 99.8th
Quantitative Reasoning 125 95th
Visual-Spatial Processing 126 96th
Working Memory 123 94th
DOMAIN
Nonverbal IQ 132 98th
Verbal IQ 135 99th
Full Scale IQ 135 99th



Nonverbal Tests Scaled score (1-19) Verbal Tests Scaled score (1-19)
Fluid Reasoning (routing) 15 Fluid Reasoning 17*
Knowledge 19* Knowledge (routing) 16*
Quantitative Reasoning 14 Quantitative Reasoning 15
Visual-Spatial Processing 13 Visual-Spatial Processing 16*
Working Memory 14 Working Memory 14
NVFR (matrices ss15)
Verbal Knowledge (vocab ss 16).