Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment I wasn't expecting this...

Good point!

slhogan, how old was your DS exactly? My DS was tested with the WISC-IV at 8.7(VCI only), and the report listed his Similarities Raw 27 and Scaled Score 16. Your son's Similarities Raw is 26, Scaled Score 14. I could be wrong, but to me, these scores make sense if your DS was older than 8.7. I don't know...Just a thought.

slhogan, trust your instincts. With your experience, you are in a good position to gauge. The SCAT is a good and cost effective idea.

Most of all, hugs to you.

Sorry this didn't turned out the way you expected. I could imagine I would feel very confused by those results. Does your child seem to "work hard" to you or did things just come to him? I understand wanting to get a bargain, but maybe this tester was cheap for a reason (not blaming you for choosing her, just starting to wonder).

It sounds like you've gotten a lot of support here already for trusting your instincts. As much as I am put out by GT programming in many of my local schools lumping a lot of above avg achievers in with truly gifted kids (calling kids with IQs of 135 and 105 all the same thing if the 105 kid is a higher than avg achiever), I've become less & less certain how much we can rely on IQ tests to be totally accurate.

One of my dd has wild swings in IQ scores. In her instance, I'm not so certain in my mind where she falls, so I don't have as many instincts to trust in regard to her. Your son clearly presents differently than this one set of IQ scores shows and you have enough experience with truly gifted kids that I wouldn't worry that you are misinterpretting what you are seeing in his achievement.

His report accurately states that he is 8 years 10 months. I don't have the numbers with me at the moment-- I will double check them later today to see if I listed them correctly in my previous post.

Sorry to hear about your dum test
This was my thinking when I read your post

If your goal is DYS, have you considered achievement testing? Many of the talent searches offer affordable testing on the Explore, which DYS accepts.
DYS lists some talent search opportunities here http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10260.aspx may be worth looking into.
{{Hugs}}

I appreciate everyone's advice!

I double-checked his scores and everything I wrote in the previous post is correct.

I'm just working through the results right now and coming to the obvious conclusion that it's just a test and I still have the same kid. He will be taking the ITBS and CogAT testing in late spring at his private school. If those results come back very high then I will look into SCAT or Explore.

I remembered yesterday that my daughter-- now 13-- took a g/t qualifying test (I don't know what it was) when she was 8 years old. I thought it would be a no-brainer that she would get in. I was stunned when her test came back 55th percentile (97th was required to get into the program). She wasn't tested again until last year when she hit the ceiling on her CogAT. At 13 she is a sophomore, makes straight A+ on her report cards with barely any studying, and is on track to graduate from college with quite a bit of college credit under her belt at the age of 15. She is obviously above the 55th percentile in her abilities.

So... maybe my son will be the same way. Perhaps like his sister he just doesn't test well at this age. Or, maybe he has a totally average IQ, and I should be thankful for that. Who knows. I guess time will tell.

Gosh, you might want to check out scat even if he doesn't do great on the Cogat, etc...it is fairly affordable compared with other tests. I think he'd just have to have 95% or higher on a state test like the ones most schools do every year.

Yeah, all these tests are just tests, at most a few hours out of one day. And only definitely show that some kids are good at taking those sorts of tests, and some less so. It really doesn't sound like either of your kids have 'totally average' brains.