My son has very superior expressive oral language abilities. I believe the WISC IV scores were probably valid in that domain. He also has superior visual/spatial skills. Creates massive Lego Bionicle constructions from scratch that other kids find mindboggling (for example). Can assemble a 500+ piece lego set in under 20 minutes after looking through the directions once.
On the other hand I didn't get the "ceiling" comments either. I didn't find out until after I got the report that the neuropsych who did the testing doesn't "believe" in gifted scores above 135. Said she didn't believe in sensory integration problems either - another issue my son struggles with daily.
There are a number of problems with the WISC III assessment scoring, don't you think? As I understand it, that assessment should have had a GAI calculated instead of the FSIQ given the disparity in subtest scores (5 to 14). But I don't know how to calculate A GAI for that test.
And the DAS II scoring seems a little goofy too. 2 SD range in the subtests? Combining 100, 101 and 120 together - again a larger than 1 SD difference in scores. But I don't know much about the DAS II so I'm not as sure of my ground with that one.
No special accommodations have ever been made for his hearing loss. None of the "professionals" ever appeared to consider whether his hearing loss might have affected his test scores in some subtle way. Instead the reports have comments like "he could hear me when I whispered his name therefore his hearing loss appeared to have no impact on his performance". Even when I told the latest school psych she needed to look into this, she didn't bother or didn't have the time. So I got yet another report that says his hearing must not have played a role in his performance and won't bother him at school because he could answer her questions about his dog in her private, quiet office one on one. This from a PhD who is teaching school psych students to do assessments at our local college.
He has obvious executive function problems - possibly ASD but very high functioning. Can't get anyone to assess him for that because he can talk a blue streak as long as you don't try to engage him in truly reciprocal dialogue. Had more than one adult tell me he's a little professor.
Achievement testing ranges from low average to average on WJIII after 2 years homeschooling following his missing most of 5th and half of 4th grade due to Crohn's Disease. His fluency is low in all three domains (reading, writing, math).
Trying to figure out what to do about his school placement for next year is giving me ulcers. I think he needs to go back to some kind of public school setting but I am despairing of getting him the array of supports and accommodations he will need to be successful partly because I can't get a decent, reliable psychoed eval out of the school psych.
Patricia
Last edited by rlsnights; 04/26/09 06:00 AM.
