Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Best achievement test for 4 year old

I am interested in seeing if my DS will qualify for DYS.

He is 4:6 now. What is the "best" achievement test to give a child this age (and by best, I don't want an 'easy' test, more a test that has the best chance of giving accurate and useful results for a young child).

I believe that you can use scores from before a child's 5th birthday, but that your child must be 5 to submit an application.

DYS DS took the WJ Ach. at 4 for an extra-curricular enrichment program, and the biggest benefit was the high ceilings. When DS was tested at 6, the tester recommended the WIAT. While the tester felt this test is more "child-friendly," DS hit some ceilings. So for him, the WJ might actually be a better test.

I think one of the trickiest things you might run into at that age is getting composite scores. It seems some subtests might not be normed for very young students. Make certain that your tester is aware of your need for a test, with DYS-appropriate composite norms available for your child's age. I seem to remember that the WJ may had some issues here, with percentiles not available on composites up to the 145 minimum at age 4.

Still, we were able to use the WIAT results for DYS.

Best wishes!!!

Loy is correct about tests. The WJ has better ceilings, since it's not as tied to item sets, unlike the WIAT and KTEA, which both have item sets for reading comprehension and written expression. All three tests have issues with composites for 4-year-olds. The WJ, in particular, sometimes gives questionable composite scores, because of the data available in the standardization sample. The other two simply don't have composites available at this age level for some areas (the KTEA has a Reading Composite and an Oral Language Composite, the WIAT has only an Oral Language Composite). From the child-friendly standpoint, both the KTEA and WIAT are more accessible than the WJ, and thus more likely to elicit optimal performance.

Yes - you are 100% correct on this we did run into issues with this exact issue on the WJ. It was still worth doing the testing as it was more or less at the end of the school year. We can see clearly a lot of progress and hopefully it will establish a baseline for future achievement testing every 2 years or so. (our tester is nice and fun too so DS4 had a good time doing this).