Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Does anyone know...?

My 12 year-old child has been grade skipped one year and recently sat an assessment (for school entry) that tests bright children (the top 10%) on multiple subjects (maths, problem solving, comprehension, spelling and literacy). The lowest score my child received was in the top 7%ile. Does anyone know what the percentile might be had it been a test for all abilities and of the same age? Is there a maths equation to work out a bell curve over a bell curve??

Thank you.

0.7%?

Maybe if she were the same age, but she's at least a year younger.

Depending on the assessment, it may have general population norms as well. You could ask the assessor for those %iles. But it probably won't tell you anything more than 99th %ile.

The assessment is specifically created for this school, so it's only ever been normed to take in the top 10% of the top 10%.

I suppose if one year of ability is one standard deviation then maybe 0.7%, being 2.5 SDs, could be turned into 3.5 SDs for a child one year older?

That sounds like achievement testing (based on exposure to academics) rather than ability testing and unless the ceiling is very high for 12 year-olds (like the SAT or ACT), I can't see accuracy beyond the top one or two percentiles. Since your DS skipped a year, I am assuming that he is now an 8th grader, which makes this the last year that most talent searches even uses the SAT/ACT as an out of level assessment tool. If he hits above 720 on the new SAT Math or EBRW before turning 13, then 3 SD is probably very likely.