Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment SB5 Test Question

My DD8 was tested yesterday using the SB5. Afterwards, the psychologist explained a bit about each subtest and her projected score. I asked if she hit any ceilings. He explained that out of the 10 subtests, she got to the 6th level on 8 of them. He did tell me that there are 6 levels for each subtest and that to terminate that subtest, the child has to miss a certain number of questions in the level. So if a child misses x number in level one, the psych. moves on to the next subtest. Otherwise, he moves to level 2 of the same subtest, etc.

My question is regarding his response to my question. I don't think he really answered it. Just because she got to the 6th level in 8 of them does not mean that she hit the ceiling, right? There are only 1 or 2 subtests that he thinks she will end up with a score of 19, so that would imply that she hit the ceiling on a maximum of 2 subtests right?

Well, *sometimes* they do help! It can take a good bit of hashing out to make sense of it all. And it's just one test on one day, so it's not the be-all, end-all of who a kid is. (And all those other caveats...)

BUT...

Our testing *really* did point us in some right directions that we might not have realized on our own, at least not without a lot more trouble. For example, knowing that DS7 is a pattern maniac who can make sense of nearly anything put in front of him, but who cannot work much faster than a kid his real age is very useful knowledge! It changes the whole way we approach his education, and it has made school MUCH easier!

Don't be too frustrated, G3. I think it will make sense eventually! Recent scores can take some time to settle in, you know?

I think that's a good way to think about it. Because you do really range wildly with crazy emotions, confusion, fear/blind panic, thinking you get it (only to find that you totally misunderstood something major about the testing process), understanding, and acceptance. Or something along those lines. It's a process.

Right on, Dottie!

Grief is a pretty accurate analogy...only testing results might be more scary. After all, death is final; testing is only the beginning of the whole mess you have ahead of you!

This is sort of off-topic, but still about SB5. I noticed that there has been a dwindling off of identified gifted students in our district in the lower grades. I've been wondering that, with the increased use of SB5, maybe there have been less students meeting that 130 cutoff. With the re-norming, I wonder if percentiles would be better to use than IQ scores. Davidson seems to take that into account for their programs.

The older WISC and SB had different standard deviations and different percentile equivalents. But districts had the same cutoff and that cutoff hasn't changed despite the change in the tests. Also, it's harder to get a higher score on the SB5 compared to the earlier version because of the renorming. (Or possibly it could be argued that the earlier version was artificially high...who knows).

Okay, here's a link that illustrates that an IQ from one test does not have the same meaning (i.e., percentile equivalent) as the same IQ from another test:

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQBasics.aspx

The newer tests were normed to run 3-4 points lower than the earlier tests to compensate for the Flynn effect, the tendency for IQ scores to go gradually up in a population with time.

Here is a reference. See #5

http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10405.aspx

We cross-posted. Our district has used the same 130 cutoff for years. I have a hunch that kids who would have made the cutoff in earlier years are not making the cutoff -- could be that kids who were taking an older IQ test, say, in 2006 were artificially high due to the Flynn effect or there could be some flaw with the new test. Sometimes a bell curve may be forced onto data that is not really normally distributed - I suspect there's some of that, but again, who knows...

Dottie,
Your earlier post did answer my question - thanks so much. I searched the archives for a couple of hours last night because I knew there was a post that explained the different kinds of ceilings!

So I guess he felt he was answering my question.

He already told us that her score will be around 140. I was just trying to figure out if she hit any ceilings.

Apparently since most kids score lower with the SB5, that's a solid HG+ score. The whole point of this test was to see if she qualifies for the "I-still-can't-believe-this-perfect-school-exists" school for exceptionally gifted students. It's even reasonably priced (because it's part of a nearby public school system). The psych believes that her score will qualify her to continue with the application process, so we're very happy with the test results. Of course, if she gets in there will be a whole new set of challenges - DD8 doesn't want to switch schools and we'd have to drive her there and back (we both work full time and already have to drive our DD3 to preschool). But it would be a nice problem to have, right? Choices are always a good thing!

I'm still processing the rest of what the test tells us about her. For example, her 2 best areas are fluid reasoning and quantitative reasoning (we already knew she was gifted in math). He said that the part of fluid reasoning that she is best at is the analogies and verbal absurdities. I'm wondering what that really means she's good at in the real world. And the subtest she scored 19 on from her prior WASI test was non-verbal visual spatial, but on this one, he projected her scaled score at 16 or 17. Of course her lowest score (125) was in working memory.

Also, he gave me info. about what each subtest measures. He explained working memory as holding something in your memory and being able to manipulate it. For example, he would tap on some blocks in a pattern and tell her to watch him. Then instead of asking her to repeat his pattern, he would ask her to do something else that required her to use the info. about the pattern he used. Very interesting.

I assume you all know this type of stuff already, but if I'm wrong and you want more details, let me know.

I love this board. What a difference this has all been since finding you guys!