Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy When to test?

This question is both for myself and I friend. We both have rising Kers. The preK teacher of her Ker told her in all her 30yrs of teaching, she had never seen a kid as advanced as he is. Our school from what I've been told has a no acceleration policy (subject or grade). They differentiate w/ reading groups at K-1 level, that's it. It's also a K-1 school only. What do you recommended for testing and at what age?

My friend's son turned 5yrs Dec 2007. My boy turned 5yrs May 2008. Would you go w/ the WIPPSI or SBIV/V this summer before school starts? The psych I used for my older son is not experienced enough to give SBV he said but could do SBIV. He didn't mention the WIPPSI.

What about achievement testing? I've read and been told the WJIII is inflated at this age but is it still worthwhile attempting to get a feel for LOG?

Thanks!
Dazey

My son turned 5 in December as well. We tested him on the SB-V at 4 years 9 months and the WJ-III at 5 years 1 month.

IQ testing for us confirmed what I already knew--that DS was gifted. He actually scored higher than I expected though. I do think his scores are accurate though. In the last few months my son has made academic leaps and bounds. Based on his scores we changed him from a preschool/daycare to a Montessori school. I think that change in learning environment alone has really helped my son. I honestly don't know if we would have made that change without having had the testing done. It was the push I needed to advocate stronger for my son.

The achievement testing was only done to qualify for DYS. It did give my son very high math scores but I do belive they were accurate as my son seems to pick up math very easily. The WJ-III at his age didn't require him to solve multiplication or division problems for a high score (which he could have done). I guess the inflation may be because 5 years old aren't expected to read or perform mathematical operations. When they can, obviously their scores will be higher.

I also have an almost 4 year old daughter (June Birthday) and an 21 month old son and I don't think we will test them until at least the summer before K or 1st grade, if needed. At this point I doubt my daughter would cooperate with a stranger whereas my son had no issues with the tester. He loved the testing process.

I guess I would ask what the purpose of the testing would be. If your school isn't going to do anything like acceleration or grade skip, then maybe there's no point in testing now. That said, we got our son tested this spring at 4.1 (Jan. birthday) because we wanted to know if he should enter Kindy early, and our district requires proof of IQ 130. He took SB-V. Based on our psych's recommendation, we will have him do achievement testing next year at 5 simply for DYS. (We're also not sending him to K early, and we'll keep our fingers crossed for accommodations.)

I think Dottie might be someone who would know best recommended times for particular IQ tests, but I think I heard 6 or 7? Also, Dottie or someone might pipe in on this, but I think I've heard SB-IV is not so great for testing gifted kids; SB-V is better.

I think for me as well as my friend, the purpose would be to have the question answered about whether DS needs something more than our PS will offer. It can also be used, assuming high achievement scores, to lobby for a teacher that is skilled w/ differentiation. If all that fails, then it would give me the impetus to pull DS out and HS if he came out several grade levels ahead AND was unhappy in K. My older son, looking back, was depressed most of K. I won't let that happen to another one. But he's a different kid, very happy-go-lucky, roll with the punches and not as intellectually intense as his brother so I think K will be fun for him....although he already complains about preK. It's a play-based preK but he hasn't really connected w/ the kids and doesn't like the toys they have. He knew all his letters and sounds and that c said /k/ and /s/ by 20months, read a Bob Book (the first one) when he was 2yrs+, was doing simple addition/sub in his head just turned 2yrs old (2+1, 4-2, 1+4) w/out being taught 1to1 correspondence or addition formally, at 2yrs old used a parallelogram and triangle and said "look a trapezoid!" He then used a parallelogram, trapezoid, and triangle to make a hexagon. Yesterday I told him he had a month left in preK he told me "that's 7x4." Upon further questioning, he told me that there are 4 weeks in a month and 7days in the week so 7x4 is the number of days. Now he only goes to preK 3days/week so it should be 3x4 lol but I'll forgive him that oversight! On more than a handful of occasions, he has answered a math problem given to his 2nd grade brother and gotten it correct. I thought it was a fluke at first.

FOr instance, we were talking money and owing money and relating it to negative numbers. He now had -$2 b/c he had $2 but was given a candybar for $4 (he go the -2 on his own). He then got an allowance of $2. I asked how much money he has, the then 4yr old said "Zero dollars b/c I owe the store for the candy bar." I thought that was good reasoning skills for a young 4yr old.

Yes, I've read optimal time to test is 7yrs old b/c the WISCIV starts at 6yrs old and the kids are more mature and will perform well on the testing.

At the Parents meeting, someone asked what if my child already knows the topics you've listed for K, the teacher responded "Then your child needs to find something else to do."

I was unsure of the SBV b/c two of my friend's boys who took it, and whom I know are HG+++, scored only 130 on it. The psych didn't recommend the SBIV b/c he said he is not DYS-approved but no the website it is listed.

Ok, so SBV (not the WIPPSI???) but not achievement testing?

Dazey

Is the ITBS an achievement test? I know it's not recognized for DYS but I'm wondering what you think of it. I've heard it is a great test for determining where a child is. I've also heard that it is an easy test and doesn't really tell you anything. Mine took it at 6 (just turned 6) and scored 99 percentile in both math and reading. The school uses it for GT screening, along with the COGAT.

I would stay away from SB-IV, no reason to take an outdated test. The recommendation is usually to stay away from WPPSI for gifted kids at the age of 5 due to ceilings issues and wait till they are 6 and able to take WISC-IV or to take SB-V.

That said we did WPPSI at 5:3 and it went great. Yeah, he hit ceilings but he still got great numbers. We were told that his VIQ wasn't accurate, but that was because he is bilingual. We were told to retest him at the age of 7 if want more accurate verbal score.

If DYS is one of your goals, keep in mind that the criteria for WPPSI is 150. 5 points is quite a lot. I am not sure if a score of 150 for 5 year old would be 145 for 6 year old on WISC-IV (I doubt it). I can see why they increased the requirement. If a child is tested at the age of 3 and cooperates, he/she will have a huge advantage and get higher score just thanks to the fact that lots of 3 year olds in the testing sample didn't cooperate, couldn't concentrate for too long or simply didn't care. I think this advantage decreases with the age. 5 year olds are more likely to cooperate than 3 year olds (don't tell me that's not the case, since I have high hopes that one day DS3 will be much more agreeable than he currently is).

DS5 also took WJ-III. Word of warning about that, you may have problems to get some of the composite scores at the age of 5 and especially if your child is not in K yet. They just don't have samples for it, so I would double check with the psychologist and see what exactly you will get out of it. DS5 was tested at 5:3, he was already in K and he still didn't get one of the subtests (written test, I think) and didn't get one of the composite scores and therefore the total achievement score.

Crics's son took WJ-III at 5:1 (I think), but wasn't in K yet and he missed even more scores than my son did. They both became DYS with the scores they had, but it may be something to consider.

BTW Dottie, do you remember the discrepancy between DS subtest reading scores and the composite? I think the subtests scores were by his age and the composite by grade.

All that said I am extremely thankful that we did have him tested at that time. It was a real eye opener and one of the best things we have done as far as him being gt. I think we will have DS3 tested at similar age.

Good luck

You know, I never asked if it was the K version or the first version. I'm thinking it would be the first grade version because here kids start K at 5 and go into 1st at 6 (Sept 1 cutoff). Although many parents put young 6s in K for various reasons. SO, there wouldn't be much point in giving him the K version, would there?

HHm so not sure what to think now lol. My friend's kid would be 5.7ish when she is thinking of having him tested. Unfortunately, he missed the K cutoff last year by a week.

For my just turned 5yr old, I think I'll wait at least a year for testing. If I pull his older brother from school and K is going badly, I'll pull him as well. If he's enjoying K, i'll leave him in especially if he gets his older brother's 1st grade teacher for 1st.

I'll discuss things further w/ friend. I had originally suggested she get him tested just to convince herself that he is exceptional.

I'll just pipe in and say if you want to use your testing to advocate with the school, it would be wise to check and see which test the school will accept. They may be very particular or not at all.
I'm not sure if the WISC-IV is better or worse for globally gifted kids or if the SB is better for globally gifted.
DD8 had high scores evenly on the WISC, thus I've inferred that she is globally intelligent.
Not sure how she would test on the SB.

"Squirt, where was he tested? For standard purposes, most will use the grade the child is in, regardless of his age. Many of those tests also have fall and spring versions (and norms!) just to complicate the matter further. If you have the results printout, it should be clearly marked."

He was tested by the school district. I don't have the results printout, just the two scores. I'll ask because now I am curious. I just wondered what the thoughts were on it as a test. We are having him take the 2nd grade ITBS in June to help decide what to do next year. I'll make sure I ask whether it is spring or fall.

I'm one of the few people (to my knowledge) on the forum whose kid had both the SB-V and the WISC. DS6 had a horrible test day for the SB-V--lacking several hours of sleep, illness coming on, etc.--so he tested GT on the SB-V but not DYS-level, and it was clear even to the tester (who had just met him for the first time that day) that DS6 was not really showing what he could do. "He seems tired," the tester kept saying. He advised us to retest with the WISC to get a truer read. We did and we're glad we did.

Plus I'm not 100% convinced that the SB-V was a good test for our DS6. He showed verbal on the SB-V, which is supposed to be more geared to spatial kids, but he showed highly spatial on the WISC, which is supposed to be better for verbal kids. <shrug> Odd.

Anyway, the nice thing about the WISC, I think, is that it's shorter than the SB-V by a lot--like 2 hours shorter for us. That's a lot better for a younger child. Because it's shorter, it's also usually cheaper.

I think I'd recommend starting with the WISC for a younger child, even though this seems to be running contrary to some of the wisdom I'm hearing in this thread. But I also recognize that since the WISC is what got my son the good score, I may be unfairly biased in its favor...

CFK, I'm surprised. Both our testers (two different ones!) led me to believe that it's pretty standard for the SB to take longer than the WISC. Since the SB was a good two hours+ longer--we had to break for lunch and come back to finish it!--and the WISC took only an hour total, I didn't really question them about it.

Interesting. Maybe it's more dependent upon the tester than I was led to believe? Hmmm...

Anyway, I got a lot out of the WISC, but I agree that the achievement test was more earth-shattering for us. It's what told me that DS was potentially a DYS candidate. The WISC showed me some bottlenecks to watch out for, and I'd not seen those before. But the achievement test (Woodcock-Johnson III for us) changed the way we approached education for our son.

It's good to know so that I don't give out bad info. I hate to do that! So thanks for straightening me out.

I never keep references handy, but I thought the optimum age for testing is 7.9. Clearly it also depends on when you need results for advocacy.

It must have something to do with the tester. My dd took the SB (when she was 5yo) and was finished in just a little over an hour. I think the tester can choose where to start the questions so the child does not have to spend an inordinate amount of time on easy questions. This is where it is beneficial to have your testing done by someone who regularly works with gifted children. Dottie can correct me if I am wrong.

Summer

I agree that a GT pro is always a good idea, but I should mention that our SB tester is one of the nationally acknowledged experts in the area of GT testing. Seriously, like one of the biggies! We actually travelled to see this particular tester because of the expertise factor, and that's one reason DS6 didn't sleep well before the test.

Seriously, MUCH experience...and books published on the subject of GT ed! This was not some newbie, so I don't think that was our particular problem.

My guess? I think my son's sleepiness had a lot to do with the long test time. The SB tester didn't even do extra tests with DS6. Just the required ones.

Still, the SB tester told us that it takes 90 minutes-3 hours for the SB if the child is GT, and it took our son over 3 hours!

OTOH, the WISC was just barely over an hour, and that tester even threw in an extra verbal subtest at the end to soothe her own curiosity. This second tester was a different, local one, who is experienced with GT, but young and not a nationally recognized old hand like the first tester.

Weird.

I know I�ve posted this before, but I wanted to chime in that the psychologist, who tested my son almost two years ago, told me that he absolutely recommended the WISC-IV over the SB-V if I was looking for higher scores to get into a program.

He has decades of experience in testing gifted children, but is not a name that most here would recognize.

Also, I don�t know where I�ve heard this, but my understanding is that around 7-9 is the best age for testing.

BTW, the SB-5 testing was well over two hours long for my son.

I want to clarify that the psych advised to go with the WISC-IV when I initially contacted him by phone rather than after my son tested.

My son took the SB-V and I remember it taking about 2 hours with a very short 5 minute break (enforced by the tester--my son didn't want to stop).

Wow, I was suprised to see the 65 - 80 minutes on the WISC. My son's tester did both the WISC and the WIAT in about 2 hours, with a 5 - 10 minute bathroom/snack break. Hmmm.

When DS tested with the WISC IV he was 9years 10 months or so and I think it was well over 2 hours as well, and the SB5 a year latere was at least 3 hours. They had scheduled the morning for the SB and the WJ, but he didn't get done with the SB5 until almost 1:00. He was pretty hungry and tired and we postponed the WJ for another day.

He had enough ceiling scores on both tests that everyone thought that the scores were an underestimate and based on his recent ACT they probably were.

When people recommend testing by 9 for HG kids, I think they mean by the time you turn 9 (if your goal is to see how high the score is. If you're looking for LD's then I think it's different), because for us 9 going on 10 was probably too late to get the most accurate score.

Gratified3 - All of our schools are K-1. the only other option is private school. The baby would spend 2hrs/day in the car for private school.

It's my understanding (from what I've read) that the SB5 has routing subtests that are supposed to streamline the overall administration of the test. If this is true, why would it still take some GT kids an hour and others 3 hours? Just wondering...