Is SD lying? How much scatter is too much?

in the “LD in Depth” section of this website. I think it’s under the “assessments” section. This article should give you support for you against simply averaging scores. The article is very thorough and informative.

I have read of parents who studied up on score interpretation and then went back to the school to challenge the original interpretations. In all of the posts I saw, the parents who did this got the school to re-interpret, and their children qualified for services under the new interpretation.

Mary

and is well worth the long read.

Mary

Thanks for the info, but I was hoping to find out if the WISC manual gives any instructions. Thanks anyway. Ginny

hello i am just checking how it works.

A good analogy is — if your left foot is in a fire, and your right foot is encased in ice, are you therefore comfortable because your average temperature is comfortable?

I’m not sure the manual would have that… but it would be worth checking. Is there a university education department near you? Their library might even have something with that documentation.

That kind of spread does rather holler that there’s a learning disability — do you know what’s behind their reluctance to qualify your child? Do they think “there are kids worse off than him?” Sometimse the best tactic is to figure outwhat your kid needs and convince the school that their most efficient way of dealing with you is to provide it.

Why don’t you post the individual subtest scores and the people here might be able to comment on the pattern of the scores.

Helen

Amazon.com sells some books that tell you what the manual says. I forget the names of the top of my head but if you do a search of their site it should come up. I had the book at one time but gave it away. It was very insightful and did not cost much.

Thanks for the help guys. I do know what the problem is, but Sue hit the nail on the head. SD seems to think that the problem doesn’t come up to the level of a learning disability. I have several books that say that the averaged scores aren’t reliable if there’s a difference of 7 or more between the highest and lowest scores within either the verbal or the performance scale. The SD just ignores that. “Well, that’s their opinion.” So I need the opinion of the test manual. I’ll try Amazon, but I think that the manual is supposed to be really secret. I understand why the questions are secret, but I think the scoring information should be available to parents. Otherwise, the SD can just lie about what the tests mean. We are at their mercy. It’s a problem. I still hope somewhere there’s a psychologist who can answer this. Thanks.

Please remember that QUALIFYING for a learning disability requires the establishment of a significant discrepancy between ability and achievement. It is entirely possible that a child can show some unusual highs and lows in subtest scores, yet not have enough of a spread between the two to qualify for special ed. I see this occasionally at my site.

One year we had a girl who scored a “1” on one of the performance subtests. They psych. freaked out and placed her, even though there was NOT a discrepancy in her performance and ability. I worked with her for 1.5 years, she went to JHS, and that was fine. Later, when the psych. calmed down and I showed her the child’s academic scores and she really looked (after the placement) she asked my “why didn’t you speak up?” Well, I had, but she was too caught up in the emotions of never having had a child score so low on a subtest before. No, the child did perform amazingly well in school in the low average range, I really gave her very little real help.

Anitya,
True, there must be a discrepancy between ability and achievement, but what is ability? At some point there is so great a range of scores on sub-tests that the full scale IQ is not a good representation of the child’s ability. I have seen psychologists write in reports that they don’t have a”meaningful”
IQ and so other methods are used to show discrepancy. (Like a discrepancy between different types of achievement.) I just want to know when that level is reached. Thank-you.

I think I am inclined to agree with the other person who suggested that you post scaled scores for subtests. Of course, you may not wish to and that is fine, too.

I tend to have a view about ability that is not always shared. Here it goes. I believe that IQ is very multi-faceted. The WISC seems to be a pretty good test to get at success with school learning. As a resource teacher, I do find that subtest information from the WISC is useful and usually right on interms of how a child learns. Now, I do not believe the WISC captures all that is intelligence.

I guess intelligence is a collection of many aptitudes/skills/talents. Intelligence seems to involve the gleaning of information, processing of information and the using of information in many ways and from many sources. I believe that LDs are glitches in some areas of processing (intelligence) in some people. These LDs do effect learning and are generally thought to be lifelong. I realize that some parents here are reporting progress with various programs like Interactive Metronome, Audi-blox, PACE and more. Perhaps, maybe, these alleged cognitive training programs can change processing within the brain. I believe we need thorough research to ascertain whether or not this is the case. In the 70’s the whole collection of non-academic training programs were “found” to have no relation to reading, for instance. That was then.

However, if there are memory issues, they effect learning and functioning. I personally see this as a part of the child’s make up, functioning and therefore intelligence.

I for one, do not advocate hunting for ways to raise the intelligence scores of children with learning disabilities, just to manipulate numbers for qualification. This kind of action can lead to misleading parents into believing that their child really can and ultimately will have higher achievement than, perhaps, his/her processing issues may permit.

Our psych. does this and I have mixed feelings. She will place a child based on the higher verbal or performance score (when there is about 10-12 point discrepancy between the two). She will pretend that the higher performance score represents the child’s ability, rather than a piece of the child’s ability. Then she will have me place the child. I generally find that the lower verbal IQ score is commensurate with about what the child can accomplish in the heavily language laden skills of reading and writing. These students just do not catch up to their higher non-verbal IQ. The fact is, the child’s verbal ability has a significant impact on school learning. I am happy to work with the child, but I don’t get huge gains in these cases and I believe we mislead parents.

Ginny,

My son went through the WISC test and also was very scattered his ld is speech related. I was not allowed to see the actual test but asked a billion questions of the psychologist. Some of the areas my son tested very low in were things he hadn’t been taught in ld classes.

Also, the psychologist told me to be very careful and cautioned teachers also of putting too much importance on the IQ of a very scattered test.

Keep insisting on meetings with everyone there you can think of an insist they give you explainations to your satisfaction.

I agree with you 100% about intelligences my son scored low curve of WISC IQ yet I know he has many very high level intellegences that could not possibly be tested.

I think until it is an accepted fact that not just ld kids but everyone learns differently and schools are willing to be a bit creative to teach kids to their abilities we aren’t helping our kids.

Studying for Praxis exam. One section on test is on assessment.

Thanks,

Lyle

(such as PACE and Audiblox) do not purport to change processing in the brain. They are cognitive *skills* training programs. Their aim is to develop skills. In the same way that a well-rounded physical exercise regimen can improve overall physical performance capabilities, cognitive training programs work on developing a wide variety of mental skills to improve overall academic performance and the ability to learn.

Interactive Metronome is slightly different. It is not a cognitive skills training program, but rather a sensory/motor training program. Its aim is to develop rhythm and timing, which are more fundamental skills than cognitive skills.

You said that, <>, but PACE, Audiblox and Interactive Metronome do not claim to change processing within the brain. They only aim to develop skill levels, which basically means improving efficiencies of processing, not changing the nature of the processing.

Cognitive skills development often impacts IQ scores — largely because our IQ tests are not sufficiently sophisticated to be able to test IQ (inherent genetic ability) without being biased by cognitive skills acquisition. Technically these programs do not really change IQ, nor do they say they do. However, they do tend to change IQ *scores* for the better, because our IQ testing instruments are not pure.

In all other respects I agree with your post, especially about intelligence being multi-faceted. It isn’t *always* a deficiency to be a slow processor, for example. Sometimes that opens the door to ideas overlooked by everyone else, and a depth of thought outside the ordinary. I am thinking, for example, of Thomas Acquinas. Wasn’t he called the “slow ox”?

Mary

Mary, I don’t separate cognitive skills from intelligence. Cognition occurs in the brain and cognitive ability is a synonym for intelligence. So, what are cognitive skills but intelligence skills? What IS intelligence, that is the issue and it is one that has been debated over the years. Is it a single, almost undefinable thing or is it merely the sum total of a person’s various cognitive skills and the ability of the individual to simultaneously use cognitive skills in concert effectively? Is not an intelligent person one who is able to use their brain efficiently?

I don’t know the answer. We do tend to favor theories of one kind or another and we don’t all agree, nor do cognitive psychologists who study intelligence.

But how are cognitive scores measured? That’s the question. If the test allows the child’s deficit to pull down the ability score and it pulls down the achievemnent score, then the gap between ability and achievement disappears. The reason I ask about scatter is that when the subtests are wildly different, then it is possible that the child’s disability is pulling down some of those scores. The WISC now has non-verbal (multiple choice) subtests for some of the reasoning skills. My point is that those should be used if a language deficit is suspected. To go with an averaged score when there is wild discrepancy in the ability sub-tests is not measuring ability, it is measuring a combination of ability and disability. This averaged score is not a fair or meaningful representation of the child’s ability and should not be used to compare with achievement.