Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment EXPLORE test results

Can you call the school and ask if they ever consider outside testing?

It depends on what your goals are for testing. We did not privately test DS until after receiving his Explore & ACT results. The school had attempted to do testing at 5 and he was completely uncooperative. We always knew he was gifted. As parents, we fell into the clueless category on levels on gifted. My DH wasn't even in total agreement about testing him at that time. I just needed to know for sure. I didn't have a clue if the school would look at his results or not. I knew he was very bright and bored in school. Every year I ask my DCs, "What did you learn in school this year?" Every year his answer was, "absolutely nothing!" He was drooling on the desk with bored and easy. The staff used to say, "they are getting homework everyday." I would have to explain that he would finish it before they were done assigning and explain it. He is 13 now and does actually have to do some work every day. I still doubt it takes him as long as other kids, but he is working.

Testing him has enabled me to advocate for him from a much more powerful position. I have a strong amount of data on him be effective with the schools. I have been able to get a substantial amount of subject acceleration and compacting done for him. He had expressed no interest in whole grade skips unless the school would only consider that. We have gotten a great set up of accelerations in 3 subjects ranging from 2 years and up. He does grade level History, Orchestra, Gym, and Chinese. It worked for us. Without the testing, I don't think any of it would have happened.

In testing him I recognized DD needed to be tested as well. She is a blender with her peers. The school never would have recognized her. They didn't believe our outside testing. We actually allowed them to retest on a different IQ and achievement test just to get them to move forward and see her.

If you are testing only for the school than make sure they will accept it. In the event you do go ahead with testing. Look at hoagies list of testers or even post here asking people for names. You've mentioned she is an introvert and I think an experience GT tester will be very important for her. If she is anything like my dd consider meetings to get comfortable with the new person before actually testing. My dd is very outgoing, but she is a stubborn perfectionist and uncomfortable with new people. It was vital she was comfortable with her tester before testing.

Personally I would choose the testing. It was absolutely helpful for understanding my kids. My DD is just under DYS criteria but her needs are still just as important as her DYS brother's needs. A lot of very gifted kids never test high enough on both achievement and IQ for DYS criteria. They are still gifted. Hanging around a site like this one can really skew ones view of the numbers. There are always scores that are higher than ones own kids. In real world, they are high scores and unusual.

Are you looking to further test or IQ test to potentially qualify for DYS or are you looking to use IQ scores to better advocate for her in school. If it is the second, I think the Explore results can be useful in that regard. Are you aware if the new school is familiar with Explore? I would start with explaining to them why you took the Explore and what the results indicate. The report that comes along with the results should be useful to them in understanding her level (ie where you DD is with respect to 8th graders that took the test in the fall) and the information on the back seems useful in determining what the student could learn to show growth – you could ask if she can be put at a level that would expose her to material that would lead to growth.

I'm really trying to get the best advice about how to help her achieve her potential. I don't have a good sense about whether the Explore test is likely to have underestimated her potential or not, so that is one question. The only advantage of the DYS program would be to get some external input on what she really needs and what exactly I should be asking the new school for; I suppose getting her tested might also give me some of the advice I am hoping for.

I agree with those who have said that whether or not it gives you enough information is very dependent on what information you need. Could it be underestimating your dd's ability? Absolutely, in my opinion! My kids' EXPLORE/achievement testing scores didn't necessarily correlate that well with their IQ/ability scores. The kid who scored the best was definitely the one who had been exposed the most. My tested-PG child (who was not particularly interested in enrichment when she was younger-and who, because of different schooling hadn't taken many achievement tests) didn't score nearly as well as my more-enriched youngest child (basically, after really figuring out how gifted they were, we advocated for more enrichment, they did better on these types of test, they were given more enrichment... you see the pattern, right? :)). I'm not saying that there is no correlation, but your dd did really well, for anyone, but especially for a kid who has been rarely challenged. For my one ds who is very, very good at math, it's been wonderful taking an AoPS class. He is in gifted math (advanced two years) but could still pretty much sleep through the class. Taking a class geared towards gifted kids has been awesome - he is excited, challenged, occasionally frustrated (but in a good way - he seems to like it) and is thriving. If there is anyway you can get your dd into a class more at her level (on any subject) I think it would be great. This ds of mine didn't score as high on the EXPLORE math as his younger brother (though, granted, younger ds got a perfect score in 4th grade) but younger brother had been exposed more (different teachers, different principal). Once older ds had that exposure, he really took off. I feel like he's growing exponentially every few months. I really wouldn't take your dd's scores too much to heart, except to realize that they're great scores and would probably be even higher if she had the opportunity to be exposed to all this stuff. Also, on a somewhat unrelated note, the last few years in Reading, the score was dropped significantly by only one or two wrong. I know because our school (who uses it for 8th graders getting HS placement) put out a long explanation and said that they were no longer requiring a 22+ in reading because, I can't remember exactly, but I think one wrong got you a 21 or 22. Anyway, just something to think about.
Hope this wasn't too long and convoluted.

How did you come to take the Explore test? Or, why did you take this test?

When you get the EXPLORE results back they have an outline they suggest your kid is ready to tackle. At least Northwester did. kind of.
Does that fit your Childs needs? Some of it should.

When my son took the Explore it was more for exposure to testing then anything else. With a bit of curiosity too. For our family it was only a piece of the puzzle.

The Explore scores worked very well for placement for us.

My own kiddo, who is in DYS, didn't get DYS level scores on Explore (though if he hadn't skipped a grade, he would have qualified this year). The Explore is a timed test, and if you don't have a fast test taker, then you won't get full information out of the test. My DS9 said he didn't finish any of the sections.

If you are looking for information about whether your child is underchallenged, we got a lot more information from individual IQ testing than from Explore. The scores and the detailed report we got from the tester who specialized in testing GT kids helped us to advocate in the schools. Different schools will look at IQ and Explore scores differently, though. For some schools, it's very impressive to see that a 5th grader did better than 90% of 8th graders on Explore, e.g. But some schools will not be familiar with Explore, and so not as useful. IQ scores are similar - most teachers won't know what to make of them. The report we got from the tester was more influential, as it gave detailed explanation about how different a learner our kid is.

Thanks so much for all your responses. I met dd's Spanish teacher for the first time last night, and she went out of her way to tell me that dd "picks up Spanish incredibly quickly." I think I will see if I can find someone to do an assessment of her, just so I know exactly where we are--whether we have a moderately gifted hard-working kid or someone with exceptional gifts who needs more individualized treatment.

I haven't mentioned before that the school she has been in until now was a Montessori school, so that she wasn't quite as stuck sitting still in a classroom being bored. When the work seemed boring to her she may have had more freedom to find something else to do, even though she would complain about the fact that "we're spending a whole week learning integers." She's very rule-conscious and a bit perfectionistic. I'm a little nervous about what will happen in her new school when she really has to sit and listen, if the material is too easy for her.

She took the Explore test through the Duke TIPS program--and the results didn't really seem to come with a lot of guidance about what to do with them.