Hello,
My DS8 was just assessed today with the WISC IV. As predicted his lower wm and processing brought down his overall FSIQ but he had DYS qualifying GAI. We had him tested because DD6 scored high enough to qualify her for DYS and also because we are concerned with his perfectionism, anxiety and his executive functioning.
He was assessed with Asperger Disorder 2 years ago and was given a brief DASII that showed he had high cognitive ability in verbal and perceptual but only "gifted" in PRI. He was not given the working memory or processing subsets at that time. His spatial visual was average. He has vision issues; convergence and exotropia. His convergence issues was mainly addressed through vision therapy and so in the last 2 years his reading ability has sky rocketed. The psychologist encouraged us to seek a more challenging school environment so we applied to our district magnet gifted and high achieving school. He managed to get in and has done better than ever, academically and socially.
Here's the thing: he has never been identified as a gifted student because his star score in math was not high enough to qualify for additional ability testing for GATE identification. He gets math concepts very easily and does well overall in math but is not a consistent state test taker. I also have never taught him out of level math at home. He got into the magnet school due to high scores in the Ravens Matrix test that was used as screening.
Is there any benefit into having him officially identified as a GATE student in the school system? He's already in the gate magnet school so I'm not sure if I should approach the GATE coordinator with his scores. Would appreciate any advice thanks!
Interestingly, his tester, who is on the hoagies list was surprised with his Asperger diagnosis as she felt he did not exhibit any of the typical behaviors, particularly as he has emotional over-excitability and is very empathetic. I've been wondering about the accuracy of the diagnosis lately also and wonder if we should proceed with a 504. He has a 40 point difference between his PRI and processing subsets. Also interesting were the increases in overall cognitive abilities, particularly in visual spatial! He did not do well in block design on the DASII but was able to complete all of them today and reached the ceiling.
