Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Doing testing with the school vs private

Improvement: that's awesome.

I'd say, if he's lagging his peers in the gifted K, it's worth getting him up to speed if it can be accomplished readily, but also knowing that physical growth and continued effort over time may help close the gap.


If you have access to an iPad, we have had huge mileage out of the Letter School app. It's intrinsically rewarding (funny things happen to the letters) and reinforces skills like using the same starting place for the letter each time. It's helping us separate out pencil frustration from mental sequencing of strokes frustration.


Inconsistency can be a hallmark of 2e... or it can be a hallmark of childhood. I think in your case you might get good info from the testing, and then over the next few years you'll get lots of info from watching your DS's work change over time.

DeeDee

ETA: have you tried having your DS use golf pencils? They're half as heavy, of course, and our younger DS prefers them...

this is why I love this board ((hugs)) great suggestions! Golf pencils would solve the other problem which makes me want to rip out his and my hair - the picking off the erasers - so not only do you have pencils with no erasers you have little bits of eraser all over the house ARRG!!!!

we had iwritewords which also emphasized where to start, which he is terrible at, but I guess it seemed to babyish? or he was just tired of it, maybe a new one would get him interested in it?

DeHe

I'll second DeeDee's remarks about inconsistency - when our 2e ds was in K/1 we thought what we were seeing was either boredom, annoyance at work that was a lot easier than he was capable of doing, and sometimes perfectionism, when really what we were seeing was an exceptionally gifted kid who was struggling with a learning disability. It sounds like your school is very proactive and you have a good working relationship with them, so I'd take them up on any testing they offered. The reason an IQ test now *might* be useful is that you mentioned his teacher has said he's behind gifted K level in "writing and handwriting". Does this mean she thinks his writing output is less than she'd expect, or is it only handwriting that's questioned? It's tricky, because kids who aren't up to speed on handwriting skills yet or who have a handwriting challenge don't typically output as much writing as they are capable of... but it's also possible that there is more to the child's challenges than handwriting. Sometimes dysgraphic kids have both challenges, and that's where additional testing (IQ, TOWL etc) can help. *BUT* your ds is still very young, and a good place to start is an OT eval. The OT can look for signs such as odd pencil grip, inconsistency in where letters are started on paper and how they are formed, poor posture when writing, etc. Whether or not a child has dysgraphia handwriting OT can help with that - although OT alone (in my experience) will never help a dysgraphic kid *enough* to be able to express their full breadth of knowledge via handwriting.

Someone mentioned above that dysgraphia etc aren't typically diagnosed before 2nd grade, and our ds wasn't diagnosed until late in 2nd grade - *however* he had previous IQ testing for a gifted program, and the discrepancy in IQ score (dip in processing speed subtests) that is a clue to dysgraphia was absolutely present in his previous testing, but the tester paid no attention to it because he was young, not in school yet, and no one had any reason to suspect he had a challenge with anything. I've seen posts by parents who's children are diagnosed with dysgraphia as early as kindergarten on dysgraphia-related websites, so if you have a concern, definitely follow through with an eval.

Re the question of private vs public, I generally agree with all that was posted previously, but wanted to add - our ds has had IQ testing both privately and in school and his profile is almost always identical. I didn't particularly like the school psych that did his IQ testing, and I'm sure the psych wasn't used to testing gifted kids, but when I was nervous about the testing and talked to our private neuropscyh she gave me what I believe is good advice: the psychologists employed by the school district are professionals just the same as private psychs are. You may not have a choice in which psych tests your child, and you may not have picked the same person had you had a choice, but the psych, as any professional, is not going to purposely try to manipulate scores. You may not get ideal testing conditions, but you could also have an off day with a private psychologist.

There was also a mention previously of school districts purposely trying to show there *isn't* a need for services - and we've been at one of those schools! What we've experienced though wasn't that testing and evals were administered in a way to make it look like services weren't needed, but rather the offer of giving specific types of tests/evals wasn't made unless we requested it, and when the results were presented, they were reported in a way to obscure anything that would show there was a need.

Good luck as you go forward - it sounds like you have a caring teacher and good support at school!

polarbear

I like Letter School because the prompting is so smooth: it notices if the child is having trouble and gives increasingly specific (and really obvious) nonverbal prompts that support doing the right thing. I don't know if it would interest every kindergartner, but mine is totally taken with it and ASKS TO USE IT!

DeeDee

Yes to both.

For DS8, the school psychologist decided not to run the ADOS because my child was chatty and made good eye contact. The private psychologist we got his AS diagnosis from rolled her eyes when she read that.

And his WJIII (at 6y9m) was administered by the school's reading specialist. The report was basically the default computer generated output, including something along the lines of "DS was very cooperative throughout the test and these results are a reliable evaluation of his current achievement". All of his fluency scores were well below grade level, but averaged out to, well, average when combined with the rest. When we had an outside person review them, she noticed he basically got a zero to those subtests. When I cornered the reading specialist she said that oh, he had looked at the page of questions (ranging from below to high above his grade level), then told her he didn't know how to do those (the last ones). And refused to do anything. For all three subtests (reading, writing, math).

"Cooperative", ah! But it basically invalidated all the results and left us with no data to argue with.

Some school districts seem to have a strong incentive not to find problems, especially in bright kids who are not (too) disruptive in class. That doesn't seem to be the case here, so grab the offer. If you don't like the results you can always go private later.

Also, about ripping out the pencil tops, have you tried pencils with a built in indestructible fidget?

http://specialchildren.about.com/od/schoolstrategies/bb/pencil.htm

Although I must say that these haven't worked too well with my son -- fidgets seem to distract rather than soothe him

I believe that the level of professionalism between school psych and Psychologists who do psychoeducational evals is about equal, the train that goes into the two tiles is very different. My understanding is that a school psychologist is a masters level degree instead of a PhD level degree.

Of coures Psychologists have the option of supervising a less trained person to actually do the IQ test, and then do the 'interpreting' themselves.

I would say that no matter what the training, it is best to get a tester who has lots of experience with many kids of the same LOG as the child being tested. Our local psychologist was kind, reasurring, and had good instincts, and with all that he was a huge waste of money, time and emotion.

I think a school psychologist at a gifted school might be a great person to get a free WISC from. I think that she is hesitant to give a WISC to a 6 year old is possibly a reflection that she is more used to MG kids than HG or PG kids. There is no reason not to give a 6 year old a WISC - the longer you wait the longer you go without data, and the closer you get to those ceilings. There is always more accomidation to provide is a child needs it - subject accelerations, mentoring, skips. No gifted school could possibly accomidate all kids of the same age in the same classroom equally well because 'gifted' covers a lot of territory. A tester who is 'shaken to the core' because she has tested with her own eyes a 6 year old who out performs the gifted 7 and 8 year olds who she usually tests can be a wonderful advocate.

/rant

I do agree that working with him at home is a good idea -
Have you tried the 'Handwriting without tears' materials? I've toyed with the idea of going to their trainings so I could teach my DS at home...but DS did eventually get usuable typing and handwriting.
Grinity

G
The school psych is a phd and the reason for the delay with the WISC was actually in response to me asking about the writing portion of it, basically rather than doing it now, waiting till he is a bit more comfortable so not so pokey. That being said, my sense is that she might be more used to MGs based on her comments and I don't get a good sense yet that the school is flexible, but I haven't pressed either.

But DS had a fabulous discussion with a 5th grader today about space and what was going on in the big bang, he was so happy!! It makes some of the other issues smaller!

DeHe

That's the beauty of the WISC. Sure the writing parts will be low, but GAI is a report without the writing parts.

DeHe, with a PhD school psych and a general willingness there to work with you, I'd say do it. You're at the beginning of a long journey in any case; getting it done through school will give you a baseline of information you're going to refine later anyway.

DeeDee