Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment shy twin wisc IV results help reading?

My son was tested 1 year ago at school using the RIAS but he was so shy he refused to answer some of the questions. His fraternal twin was also tested and did great( is very verbal ) and qualified for full-time gifted at his school. So we waited 1 year and just had the one son re-tested they used the WISC IV this time with a private testing group not through the school. They told me the WISC IV has 10 sections 3 verbal and 7 non-verbal. They said on the 7 non-verbal his was in the 90th % and a couple of the sections like processing speed in the 99%. But on the verbal they said he performed average and so his IQ score was 121 which does not qualify him for full-time gifted. Yet when they did the Stanford 10 school testing this twin only missed 1 question on the whole test, better than his brother, gets slightly better grades, and has a higher reading level than his twin. How is that so? Does the RIAS give higher #s than the WISC IV? Should we re-test him with a different test? His 1st grade teacher says he is very much capeable of the work in the gifted class. Advice? Help? Some results below

Oh Rose - this is such tough stuff. A friend of mine was told that one of her set of identical twins made the gifted program and one didn't because she scored one point lower on the test that the school used. My friend called up the school and made a fuss and said "you may not put one of my twins in and leave the other out - take 'em both or leave 'em both!"

Thankfully the school decided to take them both.

Of course with identical twins there is a much stronger case than fraternal twins, but have you tried to set up a meeting with the principle and his teacher, stressing the social/emotional needs and his teacher's assesment that he is very capable of doing the work in the gifted class, and the Stanford 10?

I think the next step is to try the 'human' angle and act like 'well, sometimes the tests don't catch every gifted kid.'

If you have work samples that show he is doing 'way above grade level' work for fun at home, those might be very impressive too...

Some kids can get strong grades, especially in elementary school, and not have educational needs that aren't being met in the regular program. It seems to me that your goal is to figure out if your son does have special educational needs (and testing isn't the be-all, end-all for this) and then demonstrate those needs to the decision makers.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

Hi, I talked to the tester on the phone today since they are mailing me a full report and this is what I could get. I dont know if it makes any sense He said the non-verbal comp score was 121 (92%) the VCI was 99 (47%) the process speed was 99% and working memory was 86% . so the IQ score they gave was 121 which is not high enough for him to get into the full-time program in our school district even with his stanford 10 results (only missing 1 question on the whole test), scoring on the STARS test 9.2 reading level and school grades 97-99% and the teacher evaluation on the gifted checklist of 133. The school district here wont even look at him until he comes with a IQ of 130. So now what?

So, these are the WISC scores, then? I'd take "non-verbal comp" to be the PRI index (perceptual reasoning); VCI is definitely the verbal comprehension index; processing speed is also called by the acronym PSI; and working memory goes by the acronym WMI.

Of these four indices, VCI and PRI are the most strongly correlated with giftedness. WMI and PSI can be dropped to formulate an alternate IQ of sorts called the GAI (general ability index). Once you get the report with the breakdown of the scores within the PRI and VCI indices, someone here could do that for you. However, with the composite scores in those two indices being what they are I suspect that his GAI would be no higher than his full scale IQ and probably somewhat lower.

You could always retest on the SB-5 since he appears to lean more toward non-verbal/perceptual strengths than verbal. The WISC is better known for getting at verbally gifted kids while the SB-5 is supposed to work better for perceptually/mathematically gifted kids. The SB-5 won't have the processing speed index, though, which seemed to be a real strength for him and to pull up his overall score.

So, here's a thought. A child with an IQ of 121 is very able, not quite gifted, but still much brighter than an average child. If he is motivated and not unusually young for grade it would be very possible for a child whose ability falls in that range to be performing very highly. Bright kids often can score well above grade level especially on grade level achievement tests. How about having him take an above level test such as the EXPLORE when he is old enough and seeing how he does on that?

Just to clarify, are you saying that he scored at a 9th grade reading level in 1st grade? That would be higher than I would expect from a bright non-gifted child, if that is the case, though.

Yes I questioned his teacher about this and yes it is 9th grade 2nd month level for reading. His twin was at 5th grade 4th month on the stars test. And tested with an IQ of 135. You are very right about this twin - he is my very quiet and not very verbal child. We were thinking of having him re-tested on the Stanford Binet 5 since we heard it was does better for non-verbal math gifted children what do you think? He needs the 130 for our school district gifted class. Also someone said something about his verbal and nonverbal composite scores being so far apart - does this mean anything?

wisc IV results of my shy twin
similarities 9
vocab 11
compre 10
block des 14
pict conce 14
matrix reasoning 12
digit span 13
letter-# seq 13
coding 17
symbol search 15

verbal comp index 99
percept reas index 121
working memory index 116
processing speed index 133
full iq 121
thoughts?