Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Cost of testing? Worth it to pay more now?

How much do you know about the gifted program at the other school? Just because a school offers gifted services doesn't necessarily mean it can provide what your daughter needs. A flexible school without a gifted program may work better than a rigid school with a gifted program. It depends on the individual school and whether they will work with you.

My daughter had a brief assessment and then later a full assessment. I think it depends on what you hope to accomplish. If you just have a brief IQ test, it may be helpful to you in knowing some of your daugher's strengths and weaknesses. It probably won't be enough to get you very far with the school, although it may help you make the decision about whether she needs another school. The comprehensive assessment may be more useful with the school, but not necessarily. You may want to ask in advance because some will put more weight on outside testing than others do. If your daughter does well, though, the more comprehensive assessment might qualify her for other programs (such as DYS).

If the brief assessment is subtests of a larger test (as opposed to a separate shorter test like the RIAS), it's possible they might let you go back for he remaining subtests. That isn't standard administration, though.

We did both the short test and a more comprehensive assessment and did find both useful. The short test gave us an apparently accurate IQ (it was the RIAS and the score was similar to my daughter's score on the WISC-IV). It was probably equally good for negotiating with the school district (they didn't put much weight on any outside testing). However, the more comprehensive test gave us a great deal more information about strengths and weaknesses and also qualified her for DYS, which seemed to mean more to the school than the scores did.

If it's not a terrible hardship, the comprehensive scores would give you much more information. Would they let you do cognitive before deciding whether to do achievement as well? My concern is that you may find it doesn't get you very far with the school and then regret the expense; if you think just having the detailed information about strengths and weaknesses would be worthwhile to you even without the school using it or if the school says they would use it, then that makes it more worthwhile.

Finally, make sure to check carefully to know who is going to do the test. It helps if kids have a good rapport with the tester and someone experienced with gifted kids may test differently from someone unfamiliar with them. You mentioned that the college has a gifted department, but not whether the psychologist is affiliated with it.