Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Testing with public school or private testing

We are thinking about testing DS, our Public school offers gifted testing which is mainly an IQ test free of cost. But I am not sure how far they go and if we will be able to get a complete picture rather than just an number to qualify him for gifted education
We also have an option to go for private testing, which will involve some money out of our pockets, but then we will get a comprehensive report together with counseling about this abilities and weakness, and what should happen at home and school to challenge him
I was wondering how did you all test you DC and why

I'm a former public school teacher and I went straight to private testing. I taught for 10 years and in that time I saw a variety of testers pulling kids out of class. Some looked like they would do a great job and others, not so much.

I wanted my DS7 to have the best opportunity to do well and I wanted to know that the day they tested was a good day for DS7. In public, in our area at least, they could pull the kid after PE or on a day the kid didn't like what was for lunch so skipped it.

There is also an entire process in our area of hoops to jump through with public testing. Had I waited for them we would have been 6 more months and I wanted DS7 to start as soon as possible.

You may want to check to see if your local university psychological services gives the tests. Sometimes they are less expensive there. Make sure your school will accept it first though!!

I would contact the school to find out what information they actually gain from their tests, find out what test(s) they use. I would personally go the public route, and if there's a need for more than seek private testing. My DS was tested in public school, and we got the results we wanted. He was whole grade accelerated and has Advance Learning Pullout once per week. So far, so good.

I agree with JJsMom that you should contact the school. The psychologist should have no problem talking with you and giving you some idea of how extensive the testing and reporting is. When talking with him I would definitely mention that you are wanting to do testing because you believe your child to be bright. At many schools if not most, the majority of the testing a school psychologist will do is for kids having difficulty, so it might be helpful to note that you are not looking for problems but rather the extent of his abilities, and that you would like specific information about his strengths and weaknesses in various areas. Feel free to ask more specific questions, too, about how the test works as far as continuing to ask questions when a child continues to get them correct (to make sure the psych wouln't stop when he saw your child was way above average, say). If you're not happy with the way the conversation goes or if you're not happy in the end with the results, then that is when I, personally, would pursue private testing.

We had our kids tested by the school, the first one because of possible LDs and the second two for early entrance and accelerations, and then also had one of our kids tested privately. Honestly, we got much better, more thorough data and reports from the school than from the private tester. But, obviously, that could be different for everyone. Now, our school district uses a test that isn't as widely used, so if we were interested in applying to DYS we would have to test again with a private tester, but since our goal was to make their public school education fit their needs, the free testing worked just as intended. HTH!

Hi pree
We decided to pad to test ds 4.5 in advance of testing that "mattered" to give him the experience of doing it but also because we wanted to know what we were dealing with and were concerned that the school tests were focused on something so would not be complete. We are very glad we did because it revealed a big gap between VIQ and FSIQ due to the processing stuff. And we got that due to the report. We knew he had fine motor issues in the sense that he was behind his peer group but were not thinking of it in terms of how it impacted his abilities. So now we are aware and can take steps. If you are concerned about him not qualifying it might be worth it to test privately. I don't believe you can truly "prep" for it but at 4.5 my ds and never done anything like it but the tester believes with therapy he would score higher, so that is useful to know in advance of taking the test that will potentially place him in a fabulous school till HS. Not sure if this helps

One other thing to consider is that if the school does the testing, then the results go into a file that stays with your child. If the results fit what you know about your child, then this is a good thing. If the results do not square with what you know about your child, this is not so good.

We went with the school counselor because it was free and our purpose for testing was for acceleration. In our case it was not a good fit. The counselor of our low achieving district did not get the kids *at all.* Both of my kids are reserved. My older child, a people pleaser, was told before subtests that he would probably not finish, was not expected to be able to do this, etc. My younger is that different kid and beyond the capabilities of his older brother. He was the impetus for proceeding with acceleration. Our report was brief, lacking in insight, confusing in its inconsistency with what we observe. The counselor made himself physically available to explain, yet explanations only made clear how much he missed the mark on our dc. I suspect it can go either way. Perhaps looking at the make-up of the district will help you decide?

Maybe you could meet the school counselor first? I had, though the children had not, and figured that it wouldn�t matter that he didn�t understand them. I thought the test could speak for itself. Who knows if it did. It was a brief moment in time. The older came back with 136 FSIQ, 143 GAI. The younger, by all other measures an HG+ kid (multilevel academic acceleration �even in areas he pays absolutely no attention to-, philosophically driven, musically gifted, intrinsically motivated, etc.), came back with 124 FSIQ. If anyone is 2e it would be the older. We are not inclined to retest in the near future as the scores were still enough to proceed with the process of acceleration (this district combines IQ and achievement for the decision). The odds are probably better that you will get accurate observations by going to a psych who deals frequently with gifted kids and has a solid reputation. But there�s never a guarantee.

I think it is important to think very carefully and honestly about what testing is for. We did consider private testing, but concluded that our reasons had more to do with validation than genuinely believing that a single day could yield profound insights we had missed in the years we�ve lived with these little people. That is not to say that validation isn�t itself important and worth getting. Good luck!

(And if you read this, thanks for the welcome Dottie. I will do an introduction at some point)

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It also depends a lot on what the legal requirements are in your state. In a state with no mandate for testing for gifted kids (like where I live, MA), you generally won't be able to get public school testing at all for, "I think my kid is smart, let's find out more about it."

The other thing to really understand is that public school testing is designed to answer a legal question, "Is this kid eligible for whatever services we are legally mandated to provide if he's eligible?" Private testing, when it's done right (if I do say so myself) is much more about questions like, "What is this kid like as a learner? Where are his strengths and weaknesses? How does he approach difficult tasks? What could we do to best support his development?" and so on. Most of the folks who come to me (or people like me) for testing are less focused around the numerical scores and much more focused around the kid's approach -- how did he get to those scores?

Agreed also with other posters' concerns around the general non-kid-centeredness and not-always-GT-cluefulness of the school-based testing process. When I test, I clear a whole day, take the time to orient the kid, help him feel comfortable, take breaks / offer snacks as needed, etc.