Do most achievement tests rely heavily on writing processing speed? If that's so, then we will likely have problems in the future as well.
Some do, some don't - did your ds have the WIAT this time around? My children haven't taken the WIAT so I'm not familiar with it. They've had the WJ-III, and in that, handwriting impacted my ds' scores significantly across the reading/writing/math tests - if you group his scores by response type (oral vs handwriting vs handwriting+timed), the oral response subtest scores align with his ability scores; the handwriting (untimed) scores show about a 35+ drop in percentile and the subtests that require handwritten responses and are also timed were down in the 7th-20th percentiles. The handwritten response tests that weren't timed dropped due to the impact of having to focus every bit of working memory on the act of handwriting, and the timed handwritten response tests had not only that but his handwriting is simply incredibly slow. The one good thing about that is that when we group the scores that way, it helped tremendously in showing school staff the impact of dysgraphia. Our neuropsych also told us that there are two versions of the WJ-III Achievement tests, so if we had wanted to, we could have paid another tester to have the second version given to our ds with an oral response accommodation to show the difference in scores when handwriting was taken out of the picture. We didn't opt to do that due to time and $.
It would be almost impossible for a profoundly gifted child with dysgraphia to get the scores Davidson requires on a test like that.
On the type of achievement test that is typically used by psychologists comparing ability to achievement, yes - that's part of the point of testing ability vs achievement with the WJ-III combo and the WISC/WIAT. However, once you have that type of testing done, and you have a dysgraphia diagnosis, you can request and should receive testing accommodations for testing in the classroom, state testing, and hopefully college board testing. My ds had accommodations in place at school by the time he had testing that really mattered on his record at school, and he's done very well on that type of testing (with a glaring exception, which happened on a test where he was not given one of his accommodations).
Another hopeful note - our neuropsych has told us that eventually the college boards tests will be moved to the computer, and that will take away a large chunk of the challenge of standardized testing for dysgraphic students.
FWIW, the accommodations that my ds has for testing are: extended time, writing answers in the answer book, and word processor for essay questions.
My son's achievement tests are at an acceptable level, only because writing is a separate subtest at this age. Even so, his slightly above-average score, is the one I am MOST proud of. He earned every bit of that score through hard work.
I soooo totally understand!
polarbear
