are there benefits if I know my kids' IQ?

[Anonymous]

My child is doing great on academic at public school with IEP. Other than nothing challenging to learn at school, she does fine. She is 7 (1st grader), too young for any special program in MCPS. I am not aware of any special program outside of school that are free or cheap. Are there any locally? Are there any benefits if I test & find out my IQ's score?

[Anonymous]

My twice exceptional child was found to be eligible for the MCPS GT/LD program (gifted, talented and learning disabled), and the criteria are to have an IQ above a certain threshold, as well as having an IEP. There are GT/LD programs at the elementary, middle and high school level. There are Asperger's programs and others as well, if you dig around on their website (their website is so user-UNfriendly!).

If your child is doing well where she is, you don't need to lift a finger, OP, but if ever your child needs a special program, or tutoring or therapy, or medication for her behaviors, then a neuropsychological evaluation will come in very useful as evidence of their needs and abilities - and in that case you can check that they're including an IQ test.

[Anonymous]

You might already have IQ from when your child qualified for the IEP. It is a pretty standard test for qualification. I would check all past testing first.

As for whether new testing would help- I doubt it. It sounds like the placement is appropriate. IQ doesn’t really help much for anyone.

There are lots of ways to enrich out of school that you might want to consider.

[Anonymous]

Having a full picture, including IQ but especially the breakdown of specific strengths and weaknesses, can help better understand your kid's struggles and how you might address them when they arise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having a full picture, including IQ but especially the breakdown of specific strengths and weaknesses, can help better understand your kid's struggles and how you might address them when they arise.

NP. I agree, but would wait for issues to arise before bothering with IQ testing. My kid's pattern of scores changed somewhat from 7 to 14.

[Anonymous]

Zero benefit from our experience.

[Anonymous]

If your IQ is high enough, your guess about your kid's IQ will probably be pretty close to accurate.

Also, if you're wealthy enough, it's pretty much irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Zero benefit from our experience.

Same here because the various test results were all over the place it was difficult to get everything down to a single number.

[Anonymous]

I found knowing the IQ useful. MCPS was always very deceptive with us - “doing great” was anything that was passing and in the early years, with most grades being very subjective, and the developmental range of skills very wide, it was hard to muster any school-based data that supported what seemed obvious to us as parents - that skills weren’t on grade level, and weren’t commensurate with interest or ability.

When we did the IQ testing, it showed that DC actually had 99%+ verbal and perceptual reasoning with significantly discrepant processing scores. DC also had highly variable and discrepant subscores in achievement testing which averaged out to “average”. So, for example, composite reading might have been 50%ile, but fluency was 50%, rate was 10%ile and accuracy 30% but because of IQ comprehension was 75% at a young age with simple material. These subscores paired with high IQ actual reveal real reading difficulty that we as parents could see on a daily basis and that was causing more adverse impact as the material grew more difficult.

Even DC could see this at a young age, and it caused psychological effects for DC to feel as smart as peers but not be able to output like peers. The ripple effect was huge, and because all this went unaddressed by school for so long, we pulled DC and placed DC at a private SN school for a few years and then placed DC back in public school for middle school when DC acquired the skills after special instruction, understood the 2E profile, and had experience using and advocating for accommodations.

So, IQ is very useful for us. TBH, IMO, if you are in public on an IEP, the fact that you weren’t given an assessment report which provided an IQ and compared with achievement scores tells me that you may not have gotten a full assessment in all areas of possible disability. IDEA requires, “The child is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities;” and TBH, assessing achievement and contextualizing with IQ is necessary for good assessment.

This is another trick MCPS played on us early in our IEP process - trying to pass off simplistic, subjective non-standardized, non-normed “assessments” (which didn’t include IQ) in a very narrow area as compliant with the IDEA-required evaluation. It was not, and when I complained about it, MCPS busted their butt to do the required full assessment and hold a new meeting to redo the determination.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:if you are in public on an IEP, the fact that you weren’t given an assessment report which provided an IQ and compared with achievement scores tells me that you may not have gotten a full assessment in all areas of possible disability. IDEA requires, “The child is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities;” and TBH, assessing achievement and contextualizing with IQ is necessary for good assessment.

This is another trick MCPS played on us early in our IEP process - trying to pass off simplistic, subjective non-standardized, non-normed “assessments” (which didn’t include IQ) in a very narrow area as compliant with the IDEA-required evaluation. It was not, and when I complained about it, MCPS busted their butt to do the required full assessment and hold a new meeting to redo the determination.

Op here. My child was qualified for IEP since she was 2 year old, and we did many private evaluation (psychological, speech, hearing, OT, speech, ados testing). She has official diagnosis of autism, adhd hyperactive, mild low muscle tone, delay in fine motor skills, and some speech impairment.

No, MCPS IEP never gives her IQ test, but I know that she is on the higher side. MAP -M shows she is 4th/5th grade level, and there is no actual reading test score. They say she is on par on reading level, but I know that her reading level should be a lot more higher. She can read book on her own since age 3, and I have seen her reading higher level books at home. I think her reading level assessment is impaired by her adhd and also being careless.

I am debating if I should get her neuropsychoical testing in private which includes IQ testing since she is 7 now. Are you saying that MCPS should test her and provide the testing for free?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if you are in public on an IEP, the fact that you weren’t given an assessment report which provided an IQ and compared with achievement scores tells me that you may not have gotten a full assessment in all areas of possible disability. IDEA requires, “The child is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities;” and TBH, assessing achievement and contextualizing with IQ is necessary for good assessment.

This is another trick MCPS played on us early in our IEP process - trying to pass off simplistic, subjective non-standardized, non-normed “assessments” (which didn’t include IQ) in a very narrow area as compliant with the IDEA-required evaluation. It was not, and when I complained about it, MCPS busted their butt to do the required full assessment and hold a new meeting to redo the determination.

Op here. My child was qualified for IEP since she was 2 year old, and we did many private evaluation (psychological, speech, hearing, OT, speech, ados testing). She has official diagnosis of autism, adhd hyperactive, mild low muscle tone, delay in fine motor skills, and some speech impairment.

No, MCPS IEP never gives her IQ test, but I know that she is on the higher side. MAP -M shows she is 4th/5th grade level, and there is no actual reading test score. They say she is on par on reading level, but I know that her reading level should be a lot more higher. She can read book on her own since age 3, and I have seen her reading higher level books at home. I think her reading level assessment is impaired by her adhd and also being careless.

I am debating if I should get her neuropsychoical testing in private which includes IQ testing since she is 7 now. Are you saying that MCPS should test her and provide the testing for free?

Before I answer this, can you elaborate a bit on her IEP - what “special instruction” does she receive? If she is testing above grade level in reading and math, in what areas do IEP goals address?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if you are in public on an IEP, the fact that you weren’t given an assessment report which provided an IQ and compared with achievement scores tells me that you may not have gotten a full assessment in all areas of possible disability. IDEA requires, “The child is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities;” and TBH, assessing achievement and contextualizing with IQ is necessary for good assessment.

This is another trick MCPS played on us early in our IEP process - trying to pass off simplistic, subjective non-standardized, non-normed “assessments” (which didn’t include IQ) in a very narrow area as compliant with the IDEA-required evaluation. It was not, and when I complained about it, MCPS busted their butt to do the required full assessment and hold a new meeting to redo the determination.

Op here. My child was qualified for IEP since she was 2 year old, and we did many private evaluation (psychological, speech, hearing, OT, speech, ados testing). She has official diagnosis of autism, adhd hyperactive, mild low muscle tone, delay in fine motor skills, and some speech impairment.

No, MCPS IEP never gives her IQ test, but I know that she is on the higher side. MAP -M shows she is 4th/5th grade level, and there is no actual reading test score. They say she is on par on reading level, but I know that her reading level should be a lot more higher. She can read book on her own since age 3, and I have seen her reading higher level books at home. I think her reading level assessment is impaired by her adhd and also being careless.

I am debating if I should get her neuropsychoical testing in private which includes IQ testing since she is 7 now. Are you saying that MCPS should test her and provide the testing for free?

Before I answer this, can you elaborate a bit on her IEP - what “special instruction” does she receive? If she is testing above grade level in reading and math, in what areas do IEP goals address?

Op here. She is doing better this school year, and her IEP goals are social skill impairment and inflexibility. She sometimes is rigid and emotional at class, and she is not good at teamwork. And, they pull her out for social skill group & speech (social speech), and other services are all push- in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if you are in public on an IEP, the fact that you weren’t given an assessment report which provided an IQ and compared with achievement scores tells me that you may not have gotten a full assessment in all areas of possible disability. IDEA requires, “The child is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities;” and TBH, assessing achievement and contextualizing with IQ is necessary for good assessment.

This is another trick MCPS played on us early in our IEP process - trying to pass off simplistic, subjective non-standardized, non-normed “assessments” (which didn’t include IQ) in a very narrow area as compliant with the IDEA-required evaluation. It was not, and when I complained about it, MCPS busted their butt to do the required full assessment and hold a new meeting to redo the determination.

Op here. My child was qualified for IEP since she was 2 year old, and we did many private evaluation (psychological, speech, hearing, OT, speech, ados testing). She has official diagnosis of autism, adhd hyperactive, mild low muscle tone, delay in fine motor skills, and some speech impairment.

No, MCPS IEP never gives her IQ test, but I know that she is on the higher side. MAP -M shows she is 4th/5th grade level, and there is no actual reading test score. They say she is on par on reading level, but I know that her reading level should be a lot more higher. She can read book on her own since age 3, and I have seen her reading higher level books at home. I think her reading level assessment is impaired by her adhd and also being careless.

I am debating if I should get her neuropsychoical testing in private which includes IQ testing since she is 7 now. Are you saying that MCPS should test her and provide the testing for free?

MCPS will only test if there is an educational need. I would get her a full evaluation and then another one in 5th for middle school just to make sure her needs are getting met and where she is at in terms of all those concerns you listed. If she is academically doing well, they will not provide her with anything extra so in that sense it's pointless. IF there are huge discrepancies, you can use it to advocate for more services. Or, use it to get private insurance to pay for outside help.

[Anonymous]

I didn’t particularly want the IQ but it came with the neuropsych. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about my DS. It does show a GT/LD profile so that may help as he gets into MS and HS to ensure he’s enrolled in appropriately challenging classes with supports.

[Anonymous]

No point