Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What does the difference between WISC & WIAT mean?

What is the correlation between WISC & WIAT scores? If a person scores > 99.9% on VC in WISC ( over 160 for extended score) but only scores 99% (130+) on reading in WIAT, what does it mean? Does it mean that the person has not been worked to his/her potential yet? Is it considered an area of under-achievement? Especially if the person really loves reading and etc together with such a strong IQ score, why is the achievement test result not at the same range?

There are far too many confounding factors to draw a conclusion along those lines. At the very least the WISC should be testing an untrainable ability, whereas the WIAT is testing a trainable skillset. That means that the higher end of the WIAT results would also include high motivation/high achievers effectively depressing scores.

What if the child IS very passionate and highly motivated in reading? He/She reads all the time like a book-worm. The only thing that he/she doesn't have is that there is no acceleration in school/outside of school for reading. Could that be the reason for lower score in achievement test? Since the child is never formally taught with higher-level concept/knowledge, he/she just can NOT self-taught with those more advanced skills. Is it possible?

I don't think you can parse out that kind of thing from two numbers, no matter what the two numbers are. Particularly if one of the numbers is given as "130+," rather than an exact number.

It's entirely possible that some very smart kids, despite diligent self-exposure, won't pick up all of the reading skills tested on the WIAT without formal instruction. My kid is that way for math.

DD is 7. She missed one question in the reading section to get 99.9%. (I think the score is between 130-135) Her reading grade equivalent to 12.9 which is believed to be the ceiling. Furthermore, in the rest subtests related to reading/language art her scores are all between 95 to 99%. Considering her high VCI of WISC, I had expected more. Now I am trying to understand if I need to be concerned with it. She has no acceleration of reading or language art in school or outside of school. I am wondering if this could be the reason as she has not been taught with those contents. If so, does it prove I need to push harder to give her more differentiation in this area at school.

We definitely will take EXPLORE next year when she is able to.