Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Testing 101

Keeping fingers crossed! Why are they choosing WISCIII and not WISCIV?

The school only has a copy of the III, and since we're getting the run around we can't be too choosy. DD's principal has also given the III a number of times so is familiar with it. I don't think it should really make too much of a difference do you?

Yes, Dottie, we are so glad we chose the charter school for DD and not the regular ps. We have had amazing success with them working with DD and "getting her" and all of her little quirks. She even got a postcard from her teacher last week saying that she was proud of her for making books about everything that interests her. You don't hear about that sort of thing too often.
I'm not familiar enough with testing and the results, but how do the norms work, and how do they go out of date? Is this similar to how the SAT changed a few years ago and the norms there suddenly changed?

CFK,
We are not having DD tested for the school's sake,(they have never had a gt student tested before, instead the district's policy has always been based on the student's results on the CSAP (the state standardized test)) it is for us to see where she is, and if she is able to apply for DYS. They still accept the WISC III, according to their website anyways.
As for the principal's degree, I do not know what it actually is, but she has assured me that she is licensed and qualified to administer the test, so I believe her. I could find out her degree if I needed to, but we'll see if gets that far.
For now it is the only option we have, so we're taking it and hoping for the best.

Well, the saga continues.
The school that said they had the WISC III for us to borrow has looked for it and found that they do not have the III only the IV.
DD's principal is not familiar with the IV but is willing to get training on it if we want, but she doesn't know when that would be.
The good news is that she has now taken this quest on as a personal one! She believes that giving DD the test should be a service that the school can provide, and she is doing everything in her power to make it so. She has called the next BOCES over (located an hour away) and asked their psych if they have the WISC III, or if she would do the testing. Well, it turns out that a tiny district in the next town over from us has changed BOCES to this one that is farther away because they were tired of dealing with the local crap. Which means that the psych has to come our direction every month for meetings in this little neighboring district. She too thinks that our BOCES is being absurd about being afraid of "opening the flood gates" if they test DD.
So, she has agreed to test DD next time she comes out our way.
With this twist of events and with her talking to the little district that switched, our charter school principal is now thinking of switching BOCES too.

As much as I would like to tell you all that we have finally succeeded in getting the test administered - we'll have to wait for a later date for that news. But, at least DD's got her principal in her court and she is working on getting this resolved before school gets out.

It may be wise to hunt out other parents to aid you in your mission, which should be easy to find in a charter school. You get one or two other moms on your team and you are sure to move to things along quicker. I bet your district has no problems finding the right test when they have a "special needs" student at the other end of the spectrum.

You're right about the "special needs" testing. In fact, that is why we were originally going to have to wait a few months before the district woman could do the test - she was too busy doing end of the year testing for the other end of the spectrum. It is pretty frustrating. I have a few other moms along with me on this mission, but they have been fighting the district for 5 and 6 yrs respectively to get their kids assessed! We are moving forward though, compared to what they've been able to accomplish individually, so I'm trying to keep a positive outlook on it all.

Well, we've finally been successful
DD had an IQ test today at school by the woman from the next BOCES over. We'll find out the results next week, but upon returning DD to class the tester said to the teacher "Wow, you have one bright girl here." The teacher's reply was "Yes, we know that."

I also found out that BOCES, in general in this state are not allowed to give IQ tests for GTs. Someone along the line decided that it was the district's job to do that, not the BOCES. Which doesn't really make sense since most districts that are part of BOCES are part of it becasue they can then share resources and don't have to have all these specialists.
However, after this whole thing the city school district has finally decided to hire their own Psych for next school year and the super has said that anyone who wanted/needed testing done would be able to get it done through them with no problems. So, even though it was a royal pain for us, I'm really happy that in the future others won't have to go through what we did. (Hopefully)

Well, here they are - the results.
Composite scores:
Verbal Comprehension: 138 (99%)
Perceptual Reasoning: 131 (98%)
Working Memory: 148 (99.9%)
Processing Speed : 112 (79%)
Full Scale: 141 (99.7%)

The examiner said that the processing speed was probably a bit lower than it really is because DD6 told her that she wanted to be sure she got them correct, rather than go as fast as she could.

She seems to have hit the ceiling on the following subtest scores, since they were all ranked as 99.9%:
Matrix Reasoning (in PRI), Letter-number sequencing (in WMI)

Then she almost got 99.6% in the following subtests:
Similarities (VCI), Digit span (WMI)

Any comments on these oh test gurus out there?

We shared these with her school today and they were awed. I think it is safe to say that their jaws dropped and it took them a minute to recover. As a result of this they have decided to retest her on the NWEA starting at the 2nd grade level because she's only taken the 1st grade one and it apparently ceilings out too early for her. (They hadn't thought about doing this before.) She is all for taking them again, she loves to take test (obviously not my child )

The school also said that they are glad they have the summer to think about this new found info and figure out a good plan for her for next year. Hopefully the 2nd grade teacher will agree that something radical needs to be done. Who knows, maybe we should even consider another grade skip. They immediately decided though that they had obviously not even been in the same chapter as she has been, forget about on the same page.

So glad you didn't get the unimpressed "we've had lots of children with these kinds of scores before" response.

Very impressive results! Did they give you VCI and PRI subtest scores in order to figure out her GAI?

I'll be interested to hear how the NWEA retest compares.