This has been an interesting discussion. We had always pegged our son, now 8, as a wordy fella. And he still is. He started reading 2nd Grade easy readers @ 3.25yrs. Has been a voracious reader ever since. Because of the way the schools let kids run at their own pace with reading, especially with AR, this was one area where he really stood out to all around him.
And then we opened the gates on math this past summer. Wow. He finished 4th - 6th by the end of November, and is currently using EPGY for a more in depth 6th grade curriculum. He's doing surprisingly well with the sets & logic stuff to which he'd not been previously exposed.
So in his case, he first "presented" as a verbal kid, and still is. The hidden "mathy," though, is starting to shine, now that he's been given a chance to run full-speed as in reading. (He even scored higher in math than verbal on his recent SCAT test.)
I agree with the skepticism surrounding the AR testing. He's got a great memory, which helps him to regurgitate the facts for AR quizzes, and this same memory has helped him to hit the top of the AR/STAR testing, which as someone else mentioned is really just a vocab test. His last few tests (they test a few times each year to track progress) have been right at the top (12+), but I sure wouldn't pull anything off that shelf for him to read. Certainly, he would be able to follow the text, but not truly comprehend. He got cocky at the beginning of the year and pulled a 10th grade Jules Verne off the shelf. Ha! That lasted about three days before he called "Uncle" and went back to the lower stuff. He's reading a variety between 6th & 8th and keeps his AR scores @ 90% +/-.
