We paid for the WISC ourselves. We took him to Johns Hopkins and had a 2E specialist do the testing. Worth every penny. Once we started meds for the ADHD at around eight years old, he took off academically. He has really, really high math MAPs (99%+) and reading is also very high. His main issues are handwriting and written expression. So he had the IEP for that, but wasn't getting much in the way of services for the last few years. This year he switched from the tiny, earthy-crunchy charter school to the big PS middle school, so I wanted to do an evaluation to be certain he was up to speed with the writing and managing the organization. His writing ability is low relative to his verbal abilities, but still above average and getting better. He does not seem frustrated or overburdened. We actually dropped the IEP and 504 since he was doing so well.
Pulled out the old WISC. Matrix Reasoning and Block Design were 99%+. Picture Concepts was 63%. Functionally, he is off the charts for math and science. We are not hothousers. He either picks up what he learns from school, books or YouTube. The Math Olympiad instructor is always impressed with the creativity of his answers and holds them up as an example to the rest of the group, most of whom come from programs for the highly gifted in our city. So there is some raw ability there, more than average. And although scores are not always stable from six years old, I would be surprised to see such a huge drop.
Like I said, not really a problem since I have given up ever making cut scores for the gifted program with this one and his current school is willing to radically accelerate where he needs it. But still a bit frustrating.
