Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Intro and questioning stability of IQ score?

Hello! I'm new to the whole "gifted" world and the last few months have been very overwhelming. My daughter was tested right before her 5th birthday at the urging of her program's director, and we only went through with it to see if we needed to make serious decisions around her elementary school choice.

She had the SB5 test administered by a psychologist and we were pretty blown away when she had an FSIQ score of 148, with both verbal and nonverbal scores being identical. Her quantitative reasoning was the only outlier of 137, but all of the other subtest scores were between 140 and 150.

....Edited out for privacy reasons....

I thought we were safe in getting her tested right before her 5th birthday since i read that the scores were pretty reliable after 4.5, but i heard recently that after 6 is the best time to test. I apologize for a long-winded post, but i worry that we are making a decision to skip based on her IQ score and maybe she will end up struggling later on unnecessarily due to our decision.

Has anyone else worried about the validity of high scores and making big decisions based on them? Should i just wait to see how her kindergarten year plays out?

Thank you in advance!

Welcome!

It is true that scores tend to be more stable beginning around age 8 or 9, but that doesn't invalidate your DC's current scores, or imply that decision-making based on them will necessarily be faulty. Even if were to be found that her scores were inflated due to environmental or personal factors that will lessen in impact later in development, she is currently performing at a sufficiently advanced level that a discussion about grade or subject acceleration is worth having.

You will likely find when others chime in that there are many factors that go into an early entry decision, among which are the global development of the child (including social skills, executive functions, and fine-motor/hand-writing skills), the academic/non-academic nature of the receiving program, the length of the school day, and the availability of enrichment and afterschooling resources outside of the school day. For some, early entry will hold off the need for further major changes in educational plans for a little while, while for others, the need for sufficient play and exploration time is developmentally more important than an advanced academic setting. Also, those who score in this cognitive range generally will need many additional modifications to their educational programming over the years, so this won't be either the last time you will have to go through this decision-making process, or the last chance you will have to alter the trajectory.

IOW, this one decision is not going to be the be-all end-all of managing your DC's educational experience. Be flexible, and trust your instincts. Don't be afraid to change course if you have to. If you try something, and it doesn't work out, it's not a failure, just a learning experience--or experimental data, if you like. Breathe!

Oh, and she appears to have qualifying scores for DYS, so you may wish to apply for that as well.

Most of us worry. :-)

aeh has, as usual, excellent advice.

I am sharing our experience, because while it's a sample of one, there are some similarities which may be helpful. We have a child who was also in Montessori (an excellent one) through age 5. He had scores in the range of your daughter (although he was not tested until after first grade). Knowing what we know now, skipping first grade would have been a blessing and avoided the disaster that was first grade. He did not have it in him to tolerate curriculum that he had covered previously. This led to all kinds of issues that year (and to some extent, beyond).

That said, a great deal depends upon the public school's flexibility and willingness to look at the individual child's needs. I take it continuing in Montessori is not an option?

You've received great replies above. I'll just add that when considering a full grade skip (including early entry), using the Iowa Acceleration Scale can help facilitate discussion of factors which are important to a successful placement.

Here is a roundup of threads and links on PROs-and-CONs of acceleration.

Thank you for your feedback! Unfortunately, we live north of the border therefore ineligible to apply. I think at this time she would be ready to move up one whole grade, but i worry more about the middle/high school years.

Unfortunately, the Montessori program ends at kindergarten. I'm sorry that your son had to face issues in the first grade! DD already hates choral reading and i can't imagine her having to go through 2 years of "cat, bat, rat" when her reading fluency is that of a 3rd/4th grader at preK.

Did you end up skipping him a grade later on?

Thank you for the links! My husband requested the book from the university library so i hope it will be helpful in assessing whether a grade skip will be an option.

Since I don't think anyone has pointed it out yet, I will encourage you to apply to Davidson Young Scholars for her.

ETA: And as soon as I clicked "submit," I noticed that aeh had mentioned it at the bottom of her post.

My apologies, I missed your reply to my post earlier.

We were in areas that had Montessori classrooms which continued post-K into elementary. However, we had decided not to put him in that school here and instead tried a fancy "traditional" private school. Only lasted one year (the first grade year) there. He is at a far better, for him, school since then.

He has not been full-grade accelerated, largely due to his own choice. However, he has been "double subject (math/language arts) accelerated since early on in second grade (eventually, by two years in each subject). He just placed into high school math (basically, a three-year plus acceleration). For him, it's worked well to have age peers (many of them quite bright, it seems) and the more challenging classwork.

Our younger child was accelerated from first to second partway through the year.

If there is one thing I have learned from this board, it's that all we can do is parent the kid we have today. We just can't know what their needs will be tomorrow, and all the assumptions we make will drive us crazy with how wrong they are. There is no perfect solution for kids who don't fit. The best we can do is take a long, hard look at the trade-offs (and our own motivations and goals), and try to balance what is almost always a set of complex and contradictory needs. Often, the social, emotional and academic needs each pull us in very different directions. Many people on this board find they have to change their plans frequently, as different needs become priority at different times in the child's life.

Will being young for grade in middle school be a problem for your child? There is no way to predict. Will skipping now be to her benefit? That's a bit more knowable, at least. The IAS is a great place to start in thinking through whether acceleration might be a good idea at this time. Familiarize yourself with the acceleration literature (you can start here: http://www.accelerationinstitute.org) so you have a solid understanding of the actual pros and cons (and not the mythological ones). There's many great threads on this board exploring people's positive and negative acceleration experiences, too.

And a final thought - assuming "North of the border" means a fellow Canuck - most of the educational systems in this country are virulently anti-acceleration. Ask around about your board and province's real-life practices (not policies!), and find out whether you have an opportunity to accelerate now that may not be available to you when your child is in older grades. The deciding factor should of course be her needs right now, but it's important to have as full an understanding as you can as to whether there are doors open now which might not exist later. Good luck!