This is going to be long -- I apologize in advance!
My 5 year old son was just tested with the SB5 here in our little town. He is going to start Kindergarten in the Fall, and his pre-school teacher at Montessori suggested we get him tested in order to get him into a gifted program at the new school he will be attending. I realized a long time ago he was gifted -- he's the middle of 3 children and the differences in his development were stark from an early age (Speaking very early, taught himself to read early and read fluently by 3, advanced math skills, etc. - well, things I'm sure you're all familiar with). He also meets all the criteria for milestones in the profoundly gifted website, but I realize that's not science!
My issue here is that this is all unchartered territory for me, but I believe him to be at least highly gifted, if not more -- and this has been corroborated by the 3 teachers at his current preschool, who told me they had only seen 1 other child there who came close to him in the 20 years they'd been there. They have told me that he is currently reading at around a 6th grade level and doing math at a 4th grade level. However, he's also completing his work, all correctly, with no teacher assistance, so they keep giving him harder and harder stuff, but haven't found his limit yet. So who knows where he really is.
Getting to my point, knowing what little I did about the SB5, I was expecting a pretty high score. My brother's IQ was tested at 162 back in the late 70s (when he was in middle school) , and my parents tell me they believe my son has surpassed my brother at this age, so I was thinking probably 150+.
When the psychologist called to tell me his results, she seemed very impressed -- must've told me he was 'highly, highly gifted' at least 4 times, and even said he was in the 99.9th percentile. Then she said his full scale IQ was 130!
From what I'd read, 130 was moderately gifted and put him in the 98th percentile, so what she said didn't make sense. She went on to say that she's tested probably '10,000' kids and the highest score she'd seen on this test was 132, and added that the ceiling was 140. I was in the car with small children when she called and didn't ask many questions, and really when she said the last 2 statements I just assumed this was some other scale and I'd research it when I got home.
While I still don't understand the percentile thing or the 140 ceiling remark, what I did find out was what many of you probably already know -- that the SB5 and other 'new' IQ tests correlate fairly well with other tests when you are in the average range and maybe 1 sd away from average, but after that it gets all haywire -- I gather due to the Flynn effect. What I finally concluded was that, based on a 130 FSIQ on the SB5, a child might really have an IQ of 130, or he/she may have a higher or even much higher score on another test. I saw a comparison chart to the SB LM that showed 2 children who'd scored around 180 score around 130 on the SB5! Another study compared students' scores who'd previously been identified as gifted and highly gifted on the WISC IV with their scores on the SB5, and found the SB5 scored significantly lower. With those scores, most of the children wouldn't have qualified for gifted programs at all at their schools.
So now I don't know what to do. My husband thinks I'm silly because I want to know for sure where he is -- he says it's just a number and he's already going to get into the gifted program at his school with the 130. My argument is that if he's significantly higher than 130, we need to know in order to get an idea of how to better accommodate his needs and have documentation to take to the school so they can provide an education plan and whatever he might need to better succeed. I would like to find somebody who will test him with the SB LM, but there is nobody around here who does it, or who even has much experience with testing gifted children.
So what would you do? One part of me wonders if I'm a crazy mom -- I mean, I have a well-respected IQ test that says 130... should I just trust that? My gut instinct says that's a vast under-estimation of him, but I've talked to 2 psychologists here - including the one who administered his test (who wasn't the one who met with my son in the 5 minutes before the test or conducted the brief interview with my husband and me, btw, is that normal?) - and the woman in charge of the gifted program at his new school, and they'd never heard of the SB5 generating lower scores for giftedness. I don't know if that's because they don't generally test gifted kids, or because what I've been reading isn't true. Have any of you heard that about the SB5, or had anyone credible say it's true? I live in a very small town, so I'm thinking that might have something to do with nobody knowing this.
Should I travel somewhere and get him re-tested? And if I did, would the SB LM be the one you'd recommend? If so, where would the best place to go be? Although we don't have a lot of money, I am willing to travel if it means a score I can really trust. How long would you wait? Or do you think SB5 scores are reliable?
I'm so sorry for the novella I wrote -- I am apparently not gifted in summarizing. But since I'm treading new ground I'm having trouble weeding out what's irrelevant (apparently)! Any advice or similar stories would be greatly appreciated!
