Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Newbie- WJ3 achievement scores, meaning?

(I crossposted this on Tagmax, in case anyone cares )
Hi all, we homeschool our DS6 (pulled him from Kindergarten a few months ago), the school refused to test him. I've suspected since he was very small that he's gifted. We finally decided to have him tested through a company that does a form of the WJ3 for state homeschool testing compliance. They only do a certain battery, but the price was significantly less than a full test through a private psychologist, so we thought we'd see what they could tell us. I was wanting to use it as a screening to see if it was worth it to invest in further testing. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the information means and because the tester isn't used to gifted testing and usually only tests for compliance purposes, wasn't able to give me any information beyond "He's very, very smart". I will say that he's highly perfectionistic and he flat out refused to answer some of the questions despite encouragement from the tester.

I'm sure that he's bright, but I was looking for confirmation that he's gifted. If the scores don't show he's gifted, that's fine, it's more for future planning purposes and curiosity that I'm wanting to know. He's 6 years 5 months old and he was tested with norms based on grade 1.9 (as soon as we brought him home for homeschool, I promoted him to 1st grade and we did 1st grade in 2 months before we went on break for 2 months). If someone has some time, could you please help me interpret his scores?

Thank you so much!

Kimberly

Cluster/Test / RAW / GE / Easy to Diff / RPI / PR / SS (68% Band) / AE

Academic Skills / - / 3.6 / 3.0 - 4.4 / 100/90 / 99.5 / 138(135-141) / 8-10

Academic Knowledge / - / 4.1 / 2.8 - 5.7 / 98/90 / 91 / 120(115-126) / 9-3

Form A of the following achievement tests was administered:

Letter-Word ID / 55 / 5.3 / 4.4 - 6.5 / 100/90 / 99 / 137(135-139) / 11-0

Calculation / 10 / 2.4 / 1.9 - 3.0 / 96/90 / 81 / 113(104-122) / 7-9

Spelling / 28 / 3.3 / 2.6 - 4.2 / 99/90 / 91 / 120(115-125) / 8-5

Passage Comp. / 29 / 4.0 / 3.0 - 6.1 / 100/90 / 95 / 125(121-129) / 9-4

Applied Problems / 28 / 2.8 / 2.3 - 3.5 / 98/90 / 83 / 114(109-120) / 8-4

Academic Knowledge / - / 4.1 / 2.8 - 5.7 / 98/90 / 91 / 120(115-126) / 9-3

Punctuation & Capitals / 11 / 2.1 / 1.5 - 2.8 / 92/90 / 59 / 103(93-114) / 7-6

Dottie is our resident expert, so I will defer to her substantially superior score-interpreting abilities.

The one thing I will toss out there is that the usefulness of the test results could be seriously compromised by a tester not used to working with GT kids. If they stop too early, or don't know what to tell a kid to get cooperation, or start the test at too easy a level and bore the kid, or...the results may not tell you much.

If it helps (and it may not!), here are my thumbnail ways to tell if your child is GT:

*If you feel in your "mom gut" that your child learns differently than other kids.
*If you can't tell people things that your child does because they won't believe you or they'll feel bad about their own kids because of comparisons with yours.
*If the books with the milestones in them for kids didn't seem to work for your child; he was ahead.
*If people seem surprised by what comes out of his mouth in public because he "sounds like a little adult."
*If he loves to learn, begging for math problems at bedtime or studying books as if his life depended on them.
*If he experiences extremes of emotion, concentration, thought, physicality, humor, need for alone time/need for time to be social. Extremes. Exhausting extremes!
*If people think you're pushing your child to study, when you feel like you're hanging on as he pulls you along.

If any of these are true for you, then there's a good chance that you have a GT kid on your hands.

Tests--even in the hands of a skilled tester of GT kids--are just one indicator of GTness. Please don't underestimate your view of your child. Moms are usually right, provided they're being honest with themselves. (Most are.)

Welcome, and I hope you get the help you need here!

You said his test was based on his grade, right? You want to see his score based on age not grade. You want to compare apples to apples. The numbers you have right now are lower and underestimate of your child.

I'll try to explain what I have learned here, but Dottie is the real expert.


AE (the very last numbers) is age equivalent. That means that an average child of that age would score the same like your child. For example he spells as well as an average 8 year 6 months old.

GE is grade equivalent. The same like above except you are talking about a child in such and such grade-month.

AE and GE will be the same regardless on the scoring (based on age versus grade)

SS (the number before AE) is a number which gives you an idea how he compares to other kids of his age or grade. It makes a huge difference if the tester used age or grade to calculate the numbers bellow.

100 is average (50%)
130 is 97% (meaning he scored better than 97% of kids of his age)
125 id 95%
120 is 90%

130 is usually considered gt but it's quite common that gt score bellow that.

I think you should contact the tester and see if you can get the SS numbers based on age instead of grade. The rest of the numbers will stay the same but the SS number will go up.

Dottie would probably tell you that some of the test show more than others when it comes to gt. Calculation is not as important as Applied Problems. Passage Comprehension is better indicator than Letter-Word Id

I would also ask for the percentile rankings (PR) based on age.

I didn't even notice that the percentile rankings was included in the report. Doh. So much to learn.

PR and SS would go up if you get the tester use your child age.

Hey, no problem! You got all that other stuff covered

Thank you all so much for the suggestions! I emailed the tester asking her if she can re-norm it based on his age. Hopefully she can and it will give more information in the scores.

Just some background on us and why we're testing, if anyone's interested- it's going to be long, though, lol.

I've suspected since he was a toddler that he might be gifted (my husband and I both were). He spoke his first word at 6 months, and by 20 months we were having regular conversations with him. I was always much more involved in trying to manage his intense personality (tantrums, obstinacy, defiance) that his abilities just were part of who he was, they weren't something we recognized as very different. Then he started Kindergarten and I realized that none of the other kids were reading and that the curriculum seemed insanely below his level (he learned his colors at 2, letters at 3, he could count to 100 by 3.5). He taught himself how to read just before he turned 5 with no instruction beyond letter identification and the sound the letters make.

He started complaining constantly of being bored and the teacher was blowing me off telling me that if he were really advanced he would be begging her for work. But in class he was willing to just coast by, he refused to rock the boat. He actually started dumbing himself down, hiding his reading ability and "forgetting" answers because the other kids didn't know how to do the things he did and he said that he thought that they were doing things the right way. But, then he would beg me at home to make the teacher teach him "real things" (those were his exact words). He would have sobbing fits in the morning, begging me not to make him go to school because he was so bored. When I finally realized that at home he was literally teaching himself basic math (he taught himself to add, subtract and multiply), reading at a 3rd/4th grade level and was sucking up pretty complex science concepts just for the fun of it, while at school he was still being forced to learn to count to 100 with the other kids, we pulled him. The principal and the teacher both told me I was crazy, that I was making it up or pushing him to do these things because for a million different reasons he couldn't possibly be gifted.

I still doubt myself a lot, especially when he has throw down tantrums over multiplication, telling me it's too hard, but when I actually make him sit down and work on it, he zooms through the work in 5 minutes. I was hoping that the testing would make me feel better, that I'm not crazy, that the things I see in him aren't all in my head. I know that the test that we had done wasn't optimal, but the school system won't test homeschoolers and a full scale test is financially out of the question, so it was an inexpensive compromise.

I also have 2 younger children (DS4 and DD21mo) who seem to be following in their big brother's footsteps as far as ability; though thankfully, their personalities are much less intense, lol. I feel like I need to get a handle on my 6 year old so that I'll have more confidence in dealing with my younger children as they get older and knowing that I can trust my instincts when it comes to what they can do.

Anyways, that's the long way of explaining why I think he's gifted and why we had him tested

Kimberly

You're among friends here! I think virtually all of us have a similar story.



Please feel better, you're not crazy, and the things you see aren't all in your head! (I realize "random stranger on the Internet who says I'm not nuts" is not as easy to point to as a test, but I'm just as right as a test! )

I see a number of my "Ifs" listed in your post as being part of your experience with your DS: intensity, hitting milestones early, your "mom gut" telling you something's up, people thinking you're pushing him, etc. So I think it's pretty clear you're dealing with a GT kid, regardless of numbers. (Though don't get me wrong, the numbers are certainly nice to have!)

Good for you for listening to your intuition and for doing what you needed to do to take care of your child.

And BTW, we have very much the same story that you have: we sent our child to school, it didn't work, and now we're homeschooling. Our family became "emergency homeschoolers" last year, but we made a conscious choice to continue this year because it was so much more successful for us. DS7 is so much happier now. Obviously every child and every school is different, but your choice to homeschool is not at all uncommon here.

So, welcome, not-crazy person! Glad to have you here!

Kimberly,

I wrote most of your story for K. My son's K year was horrible. He's now a rising 3rd grader. I have another going into K this Fall and I hope it's so much better than his big brother's K year. I also have a younger DD who is 18mths so I kids are close in ages.

Dazey

Awesome list Kriston!