Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment When to assess

DS did the wppsi at 4.5 before he started school. He was reading and had some potential 2e issues, so we wanted as much info as possible going into school. DD starts school next year. She is verbally precocious and seems highly logical, but is not reading or showing any advanced academic skills. I think she will also test in the gifted range when we do test her, but she seems like she will fit in well in the regular kindergarten classroom. Would it be worthwhile testing before she enters school, or should I wait and see how she goes?

If you don't need the testing to get services, I would wait until she's old enough for the WISC instead of the WPPSI.

Interesting. Is that a general comment about the preferability of WISC over WPPSI? (Or a preference for testing when older?)

Well, testing is always more reliable and it's easier to get the child to comply when they are a little older. And I think for a gifted child, the WPPSI hits the ceiling a little too easily when they are in the upper age ranges for it. Plus the WISC just has more subtests and provides more diagnostic information.

I will defer to those with experience on this (aeh? you here?), but that's my thoughts about it.

Thanks, ElizabethN. I was also wondering about testing my DD5, so I'm also thinking through these issues, and leaning towards waiting a year or so.

Thanks ElizabethN. I was thinking waiting would make sense too. As I said, I think for kindergarten at least DD will not need much in the way of differentiation. She will turn 6 halfway through 1st grade. Maybe that would be a better time to look into testing.

DS will be getting assessed again in a couple of weeks with WJ iii cognitive and achievement tests to look for learning difficulties along with some other assessments. His wppsi showed slow processing speed relative to verbal iq, but it didn't really break down many areas. Hopefully we will get some more info from the WJ. I don't know much about the WJ, but it doesn't give an IQ score I don't think, it will be interesting to see how DS goes on it and if it identifies any challenge areas for him.

I have waited to test until my DC have needed it for school or a program. Our schools do quite a bit of testing on their own.

Neither of my children took the WPPSI, but I thought that it also lacked extended norms. I thought that at present, only WISC offered this. Actually, after the experience of having DD8 tested at school (and she hit ceilings on many of the tests other than WPPSI), I decided to wait until DS was 6 to have him tested so that he could take the WISC instead of the WPPSI (by the time we had a reason to test, he would have been an older WPPSI test taker). So the higher ceilings and extended norms would be another reason to wait.

Best wishes, Dubsyd!

That's interesting. The Davidson cutoffs put the WPPSI-WISC gap at 5 points in their entrance standards. I wonder if your state is implicitly trying to avoid IDing younger gifted children. http://www.davidsongifted.org/young...holars___Qualification_Criteria_384.aspx

Yes to all if the above. The WPPSI is not as extensive, but that's partly because young children are more difficult to assess accurately and stably.

BTW, there are actually extended norms out there for the Binet, too, but the WISC has stronger backing from the publisher for their use.

The WJ does generate IQ type scores (GIA), but it tends to favor fast, verbal kids. There is no real equivalent to the WISC GAI score, that lessens the impact of processing speed and working memory (cognitive proficiency).

Dubsyd, if you haven't already done so, you might want to see if your district has different cut-offs by age. In our area, entry into GT in fourth grade requires 98%ile+ GAI on the WISC-IV, but 99.9%ile+ for grade 1 gifted IEP and differentiation.