Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment huge discrepancy between WISC and reading level

My son is in the middle of trying a subject acceleration in math. The school has finally agreed to look at him and figure out his needs. They have put his reading level at average for grade level yet his WISC score is 158. What's up with this?

They are probably using a standardized test that doesn't accurately measure the skill set he has. Our school uses the DRA, which is pretty disastrously wrong for my particular kids. It can be a headache to get a school to notice that their tools don't do the job.

DeeDee

What does he read at home?

It varies. He likes all the scatological stuff (sir fartsalot, captain underpants) and he likes biographies of inventors, scientists.

You need to ask what test they are using, how the test is administered (how are the questions asked, how is the student asked to respond (verbally etc), is there a time limit on answers, when is the test stopped - ie is the full test given no matter what or is it stopped after a certain number of questions are missed) and what specific skills it is testing. Also ask about *when* the test was administered and who administered it - was it a part of an individual evaluation and administered by someone from the gifted or sped department, or was it administered as a routine part of class testing where the teacher was administering it to the full class? You'll also want to know which day it was given to your child, in case it fell on a day when he'd been up until midnight or the day before he was out of school with the flu etc.

If you know the name of the test and can post it here, that will help us with giving suggestions to.

For instance, the DRA is stopped after a certain number of questions aren't answered correctly, and it can also be stopped arbitrarily - this happened quite a bit with my ds in early elementary; he'd get everything 100% correct up to grade level and the teacher would stop there and move on to other students because the testing was taking place during class and the teachers needed only to catch the students who were struggling and didn't have the extra time to administer the test fully to students who were reading years beyond grade level.

If it's a test like DIBELS (which is used routinely as a screener in our school district), and your ds has uneven scores on the subtests, it's possible your child actually has a reading challenge that has gone unnoticed (it really is possible for kids with extremely high IQs to have reading challenges).

If it's an AR test.... they don't test *much* - the child just answers a set of something like 10 questions that are meant to test comprehension. It's always possible that a student might rush through the test simply because they aren't invested in worrying about getting the answers correctly or they didn't read the book they were required to read carefully simply because it was way below their comprehension ability and way below the books they are interested in and read at home. So if it's an AR test, I'd ask for him to be tested on a book that he's read at home and that you feel is reflective of his true reading ability.

Last thought, once you have the test and if the school is still insisting it's accurate, I'd make a formal written request for more in-depth testing on reading skills because of the discrepancy between his reading level (per the school) and his ability level (per the WISC). I seriously doubt your ds has a reading challenge... but that additional testing should make it clear that he doesn't

And... last bit of advice... I'd put together a list of the books he's read at home in the past 3 months and have that in my back-pocket when meeting with the school.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Have you looked up the reading levels of the books he reads at home? Does he read a lot and with comprehension? With a WISC score like that I'd assume his verbal score is very high, but is there any chance he's not too much of a reader and is more quantitative? I would still guess that "on grade level" is wrong. They may just not be paying attention. Sometimes schools say "on grade level" and what they really mean is "we perceive no problems here."

They do Guided Reading. I don't know anything about it. Anyone?

For leisure reading, his books appear to be on 4th-5th grade level. I looked it up.

What grade is he in at school? One thing you might be up against is that there are other children in class or in his grade reading at the same level, so in reading he doesn't stand out as hugely intellectually gifted, even though he's one of the top level readers. The thing about reading skills in early elementary is that they really are all over the place among a typical classroom and grade.

In any event, don't let them intimidate you by saying he's "average" in anything - learn all you can about what they are using to make that statement, and ask questions - ask *why* the test shows he's average, ask what was tested etc.

Best wishes,

polarbear

He is first grade