Hello -
I recently asked our school to have my daughter assessed for LDs as she still struggles with reading, writing, and especially spelling. She is 11 and in fifth grade, and has been receiving some Title I services since first grade (except for part of last year, when the school thought she didn’t need it). Next year she will go into middle school in the next town over, and we’re terrified she’ll just fall through the cracks. We want to get her some help outside of school, but I’m told by other parents that regular tutoring (e.g. through the local Sylvan Learning center - there are limited options in our rural area) won’t be effective if she is LD. So, I am hoping this testing can help direct us to what sort of approach we should use.
The testing has been done, and I need some help on how to interpret these scores, both in preparation for our PET meeting and to find outside assistance. (By the way, I have a hard time with the definition of 25th percentile as within “average” range - I know that’s the accepted definition but to me, 25th precentile for my girl means “needs attention”)
It might help to know a few other details. She loves school and brings home good report cards (though how if she’s reading 2grade levels below she can still bring home As and Bs in reading is confusing to me…); she was very cooperative and charming with the tester; and her deficit may in part be related to the fact that English is her second spoken language- her language until age 4.3 was Ukrainian (and she was not read to until she came home, either). She picked up oral English very quickly, and speech/language screening for kindergarten did not pick up any problems.
Here are the scores (raw and percentiles)-Any takers?
WISC-III
verbal 91 27%
performance 98 45%
full scale 93 32%
verbal comprehension 92 30%
perceptual organization 96 39%
freedom from distractibility 87 19%
processing speed 109 73%
verbal subtests:
information 9
similarities 9
arithmetic 8
vocabulary 8
comprehension 8
digit span 7
performance subtests
picture completion 7
coding 11
picture arrangement 9
block design 10
object assembly 11
symbol search 12
VADS - Age Equivalent
8-6 to 8-11 (10%)
aural input subtest 10%ile
visual input subtest 75%ile
WIAT-II
word reading 85 16%
r comprehension 103 58%
pseudoword decoding 90 25%
reading composite 90 25%
numerical operations 99 47%
math reasoning 88 21%
math composite 92 30%
spelling 80 9%
written expression 93 32%
writing composite 85 16%
PEABODY PICTURE VOCAB 98 45%
CELF-3
concepts and directions 8 25%
word classes 7 16%
semantic relationships 11 63%
receptive landguage score 92 30%
formulated sentences 12 75%
recalling sentences 7 16%
sentence assembly 13 84%
expressive language 104 61%
total language 97 47%
I would be really grateful for any assistance you much more experienced folks can give me. I want to dig into this problem, but don’t want to use the wrong shovel!
many thanks-
Sue Gawler
Maine
Re: help with scores please
According to the data you have presented she probably does not qualify because there is little discrepancy between her ability and her achievement. We use the standard scores and compare them. Most of the time we look for achievement scores that are 22 points lower than the ability. Your daughter’s scores are largely 80s-90s and she does not show an unusual pattern of intraindividual discrency in her scores that might suggest underlying processing problems are selectively keeping certain scores down lower than her potential. Overall, ability and achievement both appear to fall into the low average to average range. My experience as a teacher has shown me that kids in low average to average do experience academic difficulties in school. Our standards are so rigorous these days, kids really need to be 50 percentile or higher to manage things w/o difficulty.
Re: help with scores please
If you don’t speak Ukranian at home, your daughter has had 6-7 years in English, enough time to develop proficiency. Perhaps this contributes minimally and shows up as the slightly lower language scores you see in verbal. It may have contributed slightly in the first couple of years of school when she was initially learning to read. Why not consider putting her through a program like Phonographix if her word reading skills are a little bit weak?
She does not have a statistically significant spread between her verbal and her performance abilities.
Hi, Sue,
I had to reply because we have a child adopted from China. So I always have to say hello to other adoptive parents!
I’m also a special ed. teacher and know a little about internationally adopted children, so I’ll take a stab at commenting. There are some better testing experts on this board, though, so hopefully they will respond.
The reason this is interesting to me is that we had a 4 1/2 year old adopted in our travel group and she continues having educational problems as well. She is also currently 11 but is in fourth grade as they had her repeat first grade. I talked with someone who told me that these orphanage kids certainly can have some depressed IQ and language scores due to deprivation those first years. You just can’t always overcome everything from the first 4 years of life.
Your daughter’s IQ is in the low average range with a fullscale score of 93 (32%). Depending on your state, she would have to have achievement scores below 78 or 71 standard scores to be considered LD. As you can see, all of her WIAT scores are above that and most are relatively close to her supposed ability level (IQ). So technically she is functioning in accordance with her abilities. I do not see any indication of LD.
Now, is a child functioning in the 25th-35th percentile going to have an easy time in school? No. I’m in a similar situation with my child. She also does not have severe delays, but I fear for her being able to pass our state tests. Your daughter has good reading comprehension, though, so that is a big plus. I’m not sure why you say she is reading two grade levels below her grade. Is it because of that word reading score? Her comprehension is still average, so she is getting meaning from what she reads.
She may just benefit from whatever regular ed tutoring they offer at school. You could try Sylvan since it does not appear to be LD. Or you could get the books “Reading Reflex” and “How to Increase Your Child’s Verbal Intelligence” by McGuinness and tutor her yourself (or find a tutor trained in these). I would buy vocabulary workbooks and try to increase her vocabulary. I might buy the Earobics CD-rom for adolescents (http://www.earobics.com/products/ad_ad.cfm) and work on some auditory skills since her receptive language is lower than expressive.
These are just a few good things that would hopefully give her a boost in some basic skills.
Janis