aeh - thank you so much for the explanation. It is quite helpful.
The district uses the SPM so I infer that there is no benefit to testing sooner rather than later.
Any chance you are familiar with there being a test ceiling on the WIAT? I ask because the one area where his score differed from prior scores was in reading (10+ points lower.) I met with the test administrator, mostly because I wanted to understand the WIATIII, and also asked about the score decline.
She pulled his test to show me specifically how he had hit the "ceiling" in Reading Comprehension and Oral Reading Fluency, which can result in lost points and therefore a lower score. For comprehension, he had answered the question "What time" in the afternoon did the story take place as "I'm not sure, 4:00 or 5:00." The correct answer was "late" afternoon, but he answered the question too literally.
For fluency, she said the text was simply to easy for him and his eyes were too far ahead of his verbalization of the text, resulting in "errors." For example, where a sentence said "It is..." he said "It's".
Is there validity to this "ceiling" theory? If so, it may further influence our selection of schools to apply for. While regardless we won't know if he gets into Seminar until he actually takes the test and the results are in, you only get to put in for 3 schools. So ya gotta choose wisely!
