Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Wiat 3 versus WJ 4 achievement tests

Hi,
I'm applying my DYSDS9 to gifted school and he needs to take an achievement test. The psychologist said the Wiat would be shorter in length, but I want to make sure the test has a high enough ceiling. Would the WJ iv be a better choice for my son if his math skills are very strong? I read somewhere that WJ goes beyond high school level. Also the psychologist said my son doesn't have to take the essay/writing portion due to his age. The school requires a total achievement score, can that be calculated without the essay/writing portion? Thank you!

The WJ does go beyond high school level, by a little bit, while the highest item on the WIAT is early calculus, on the calculation side, and geometry, on the reasoning side. I would agree that the math ceiling is higher for the WJ. I would not be concerned about essay writing for WJ, as the writing tasks are all quite short. The WJ also does not have to be as long as it often is, if you administer the briefer versions of the composite scores (six subtests vs nine or more). I would seek clarification from the school regarding the exact names of the composites required for each achievement test.

ETA: just realized you might have been asking if a Written Expression composite could be obtained from the WIAT without an essay. Yes, for kindergarten through second graders, but not third and up.

Thanks aeh for taking the time to respond to my question That was very helpful information. You are such an asset to the gifted community!

So ds took the WJIV and I got the results today. Specifically I have a question about the broad written language component as that has a 57 point spread between subtests.

The psychologist said that we should not worry about dysgraphia because overall broad reading is still in the superior range. The low subtests are still within average. And she said the poor writing skills are probably attributable to his ADHD.
DS has always hated writing with pencil and paper. Typing is better, but he is still pretty slow. Many times we either have to do a computer dictation of what he verbally says or we have to type out his answers.
He hates writing so much that it would take him an hour to do a writing assignment that should only take ten minutes.
My question is since he has apparently excellent spelling, can he still have undiagnosed dysgraphia? What other assessments could he take to tease that out? His teachers at school always complain of his poor penmanship, but they say that he has good ideas and the content of his writing is good. But he just doesnt write in detail or neatly, because it is so tedious for him. DS gets so frustrated that he will have meltdowns because the teacher keeps making him re-write his work.
How can we find out if his writing issues are due to ADHD-poor focus, motor issues, or if there is more of an underlying writing disability? I'm thankful for any insight into this dilemma.

Of course, I don't have the clinical observational data and any other information that the administering psych has, but based purely on these scores, I might have come to different conclusions. It may be that the poor writing performance (both in the classroom and on formal testing) is due to ADHD, but I certainly would not have dismissed that wide a disparity between test scores in the same achievement domain as insignificant, without additional data. It is not always true that dysgraphics cannot spell in isolation. Spelling (and often handwriting) are higher-level cognitive tasks for them, rather than automatic ones, like they are for NT learners. In isolation, some--especially the very bright--are able to solve spelling problems at a high level of accuracy. This does not mean that they can apply mechanical spelling skills at the same level of accuracy while simultaneously completing other higher-level cognitive tasks, such as composing meaningful and structurally sound language. Nor can they devote as much cognition to the language when they are attempting simultaneously to maintain accuracy in mechanics. Likewise, when they must compose even fairly simple sentences rapidly and efficiently.

Whether he is characterized as dysgraphic (or SLD in written expression, which is another term for the same thing) also depends on some arbitrary factors: the DSM-5 now requires below age-normative performance for diagnosis, which eliminates quite a lot of 2e learners. This is not a position that the majority of the LD research/professional community actually agrees with. (But the DSM is a medical diagnostic manual, not an educational one.) Some states have also defined LDs as educationally-qualifying disabilities only if achievement is below grade-normative. Again, this is not universally agreed-on by the professional community.

So it may be that, in your specific situation, he does not nominally meet criteria for dysgraphia educationally or medically, based on your local conditions. This does not change the marked personal weakness he displays in expressing himself efficiently on paper, using complex and mechanically accurate language, which I and many prominent members of the LD research/professional community would consider symptomatic of a disorder of written expression. On some level, it also does not matter that much whether it arises out of his ADHD, or some other factor. Remediation and accommodation (other than the option of psychostimulants) will be essentially the same.

With regard to teasing out what aspects of writing are problematic, you may wish to observe his writing performance under different levels and types of scaffolding. For example, how does his writing differ when:
1. it is dictated/speech-to-text only,
2. he uses a graphic organizer or mindmap (with/without dictation),
3. he's provided with a sentence starter,
4. oral pre-writing/idea generation precedes writing,
5. spellcheck is on/off,
6. writing tasks are chunked,
7. those chunks are timed/untimed,
8. the task calls for sentence level vs paragraph-level vs multiparagraph writing,
9. tasks consist of informational vs literary (fictional/creative) writing.

On another note, you may also wish to contemplate the expectations for writing at the school to which he has applied, and whether they would be a good fit for his current performance in written expression, which is highly likely to be functioning much closer to the Average scores in sentence writing fluency and writing samples than it is to his exceptional isolated spelling skills. Looking back to your original inquiry, which included essay writing, I would be particularly concerned that his performance would be even more discrepant on a measure of extended writing, such as the TOWL-4, or the WIAT-III Essay Composition, both of which more closely reflect classroom writing demands than the narrower tasks do.

I only have a few quick minutes to reply, and I'm not a professional aeh has given you excellent and thorough advice above, I have just a few things to add.

My ds (now in high school) has fine motor dysgraphia. He can spell extremely well when he's not writing a sentence or working on a written composition, but his spelling while composing written work is extremely poor. If you google dysgraphia, you'll find there are different types with different symptoms, including differences in whether or not spelling ability is impacted. To briefly explain why some dysgraphics can spell really well when they *aren't* using handwriting: dysgraphia impacts the development of automaticity of handwriting - neurotypical children develop automatic handwriting so that as they move forward from learning how to write letters their brain isn't thinking about how to write the letter each time their pencil touches paper, and they are instead able to use their working memory to spell correctly, use punctuation and grammar correctly etc, as well as focus on the ideas they are attempting to communicate and how to organize those ideas. Dysgraphic students are having to redraw or rethink how to draw each letter each time they write, hence they have no working memory available to focus on spelling etc.

When I saw your ds' achievement scores listed above, they reminded me of my ds' first set of WJ achievement scores, and your description of him reminds me a lot of my ds at the same age, prior to his dysgraphia diagnosis. I'll try to come back later when I have a bit more time and tell you about some of the things we did at home that illustrated dysgraphia was an issue. We were doing those things after diagnosis (because his diagnosis was quite a surprise to us, even though the signs were clearly there, we just didn't know anything about it at the time)... but they might be helpful for you in determining if you think there's possibly an issue with dysgraphia.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you aeh. Could I PM you DS's full results and get your take on things? I really like how thorough you are in your explanations.

Thank you Polarbear for your anecdotal feedback. What have you done to help your son achieve despite his hardships? Are there writing workshops he could take? Or therapists to help him in writing? DS can formulate great ideas but I think his writing can't keep up with his thinking ability. This in turn causes him great frustration. He can write great essays and creative works, as well as writing suppository text. It is just that he detests doing it. How can I tell if it is laziness, opposition, or an actual learning disability? His teachers seem to think it is because he isn't trying hard enough or that he is lazy and rushing through his work. I feel like writing is his weakest subject but still average compared to his peers. But this relative weakness is causing him angst as everything else usually comes easily to him.

Of course.

Aeh
I PM'd you.