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Is Everyone's Child 90th percentile and above on the WPPSI III or just the DC's on this board?
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Anonymous
| Ha ha. That analogy is so right on. One of the Sidwell's admission people told me that my DC was a "fine candidate". I tortured myself for days about that comment after DC was rejected. |
Anonymous
I'm the one who is asking all the questions ("bordering on interrogation"). Many thanks to 11:38 for giving me the benefit of the doubt. I am actually completely at peace with my lack of control over the process, and I accept that it is a black box. Of course I am anxious and excited to learn where my DC might go to school next year, but I am not really anxious about the process. Believe it or not, I actually have a lot of faith in the admissions people at these schools to decide whether my DC will be a "good fit" or not, so I welcome their evaluations (especially since the admissions people can be a lot more objective about my DC than I will ever be). Why am I asking so many questions? Because I am interested in 23:22/9:42's claim that children who score 145+ on a particular test are deemed less fitting candidates. This just strikes me as counter-intuitive. I am also a little surprised at how confident and certain PP sounded in making this claim without any citing any support. So I ask questions to try to understand better -- is there something wrong with that? Maybe I need to be more tactful and cagey in asking my questions? Perhaps so. I'm not trying to debate some point with PP; I am genuinely curious to understand exactly what she is saying and what support she has for it. If it's a well-supported claim, I can accept it and be better informed. If it's a poorly sourced claim, I can take it with a grain of salt. I am just trying to learn more from those who claim to have inside info. If she doesn't want to share, that's her prerogative, but I'd like to understand her claims better. |
Anonymous
I am a new poster to this thread. I believe that super-high-scoring children are often considered less desirable because they require far more differentiation and acceleration than is typical. Our child is one of those children, and most schools told us flat-out that they aren't set up to differentiate that much. |
Anonymous
This actually struck me as quite plausible. Children who are extremely advanced are likely to need differentiated instruction, which smaller schools (as many privates are) are not set up to provide. A score at this level is extremely unusual. We're not talking about your garden-variety DCUM 99th+ percentile child, who is commonly described as bright but normal. (I have one of those; I think her score was about 133.) |
Anonymous
I can understand and accept the idea that some schools might be wary of the resources they'd need to devote to a hyper-brilliant child, especially if that child is far outside the norm of other children the school teaches. However, it seems that many children in DC score very high on the WPPSI (check out the title of this thread!), and also that a lot of top schools in the area seem to attract a pretty high percentage of extremely intelligent students. If a particular school's students are generally smart enough to be in the 80-99% range, then how much extra differentiation is required for a 99.8% kid (which is roughly where 145 falls according to this link: http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQtable.aspx)? I can understand some schools being scared off by such a kid, but all of them? I also question the significance of a 145+ score. First, just as some smart children get tired/distracted and flub the WPPSI, isn't it just as likely that some reasonably smart kids get lucky and nail it? A lot of people post on DCUM about their reasonably-smart-but-fairly-ordinary children who somehow scored really high on the WPPSI. If we accept that the WPPSI has a large margin of error (which it seems most people do) then doesn't that margin of error apply to the high scores as well? Are the super-high scoring kids really that different that they wouldn't fit in with even an advanced Sidwell/GDS/Beauvoir-type classroom? I don't know enough kids like that to judge. I am pretty sure many people who post here claim to have 99.5+% at such schools. I've never seen any of them report that their children are having trouble fitting in at such schools, but maybe they will chime in here. Yes, I have one of those children who scored well, but DC seems pretty adaptable. I guess I am interested because even if DC is not rejected by all independent schools in the area because DC's score is "too high," then maybe we should consider sending DC to a public school instead. I don't have any answers, and maybe this discussion is so esoteric now that it bores most people. If so, I apologize. |
Anonymous
| Interesting chart. Doesn't seem to match what's on DC's report (in terms of percentile and overall score), but I will have to check later. |
Anonymous
| This discussion is freaky. My DC scored 144 on the FSIQ. If she is not deemed fit for Beauvoir et al. then where exactly is she supposed to go to school? She is not freakishly brilliant although quite clearly smart. I thought that Beauvoir, Sidwell, Maret etc were the schools that would be right for her. Aren't these schools supposed to have high academic standards?! We don't live in a good - not even decent - public school district either so thats not an option! |
Anonymous
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My child scored 142 and reads at least 6 years above grade level (they stopped testing at that point). I'd call that a lot of extra differentiation necessary. Do let me know if any of the independent schools in the area are eager to accommodate that sort of need, as that would make our lives much easier!
Maybe I'm wrong, but I generally assume that the parents of extremely high scorers who say they are very "normal" have younger kids. Just because they're so bright doesn't mean they'll read at age 2, for example. But I would expect that the academic differences would keep compounding and that a high 99th percentile child who seemed fairly typical at 3 or 4 might seem a bit more unusual compared to peers at, say, 9 or 10. |
Anonymous
| Granted, my sample size is terribly small. But two children (that I know of) in my DC's preschool class scored 99.9%. One applied last year and didn't get in anywhere. Both are difficult (to say the least) to manage in the classroom. One demonstrated aggression towards other children. Both had difficulty listening to the teacher/instructions. Always have the answer (whether it's correct or not), interrupt and talk non-stop. Hardly ever allow other children to answer/participate without being made to by the teacher. Always getting into trouble of some sort, and attempting to pull other children into it. |
Anonymous
Nysmith Edlin |
Anonymous
| I too thought that the private schools wanted the kids with IQ's of 140 but when reading through the boards I noticed that lots of kids with these high school were rejected. Maybe there really isn't much of a difference between a IQ of 115 and 145 at the age of 4. I'm thinking that the schools have a cut-off at say 115 and up and then they start to weed out (by playdate, recommendations, etc). So having a one kid at 115 and one at 145 doesn't make a big difference unless one stands out for some other reason. |
Anonymous
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One thing to keep in mind is that the WPPSI is not a particularly good test for gauging giftedness.
I thought this snippet from www.hoagiesgifted.org was interesting on a study of "exceptionally gifted" children (IQs above 170--not measured with the WPPSI but by tests such as the Stanford-Binet). "One unique problem for parents of highly gifted children is the impossibility of gaining accurate information about the level of their children's abilities, given the low ceilings on modem tests. Most children receive tests that generate only deviation IQs: group IQ tests, WISC-R, WPPSI, Kaufman ABC, McCarthy Scales, Stanford-Binet Revision IV. None of these tests can capture the full range of abilities of the extraordinarily gifted because the children's abilities extend beyond the upper limits of the tests. (For more detailed information on assessment issues, see Silverman, 1989.) Seven of the children in the Maine group who had been tested on the WISC, WISC-R, WPPSI, or K-ABC intelligence tests scored between 139 and 155, with only two scoring above 145. They were then given the Stanford- Binet Intelligence Scale (Form L-M), which has a higher ceiling than these tests and yields a mental age from which a ratio IQ score can be derived. On this test, these same children scored between 169 + and 194. " http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/parents_of_eg.htm Hard to know if a child scoring 140 on the WPPSI would score the same on another test or possibly much higher. Also, the authors talk about the fact that they find surprising numbers of these exceptionally gifted children: "According to the normal curve of distribution, the incidence of children above 170 IQ should be approximately 1 in 294,000 (Dunlap, 1967). This means that the entire state of Colorado should have no more than 2 or 3 of these children. In the past 9 years, however, we have discovered over 80 children in Colorado in this IQ range. Similarly, the state of Maine should have one such child at most, and yet 15 have been found in rural Maine during the same time period. Grossberg and Cornell (1988) indicate that only 0.14% of those in the gifted range should score 164 IQ or above, but in the past 9 years 4% of the children brought to the Gifted Child Development Center, in Denver, Colorado, scored above 170 IQ. These figures add to the growing body of research that has found an unexpectedly high frequency of scores at the upper end of the IQ distribution (Dunlap, 1967; Gallagher & Moss, 1963; Jensen, 1980; McGuffog, Feiring, & Lewis, 1987; Robinson, 1981; Stott & Ball, 1965; Terman, 1925)." So, perhaps the high frequency of high scorers mentioned on this board helps support their findings. |
Anonymous
Actually the chart you cite shows exactly why a 99.9% score is significantly different from a 90%ile or even 95%ile. Depending on the scale used (Wechsler or Stanford-Binet) one out of every 18-24 (or 15-19 for the SB) scores at the 99.5%ile score or above. This means that your average child would have at least one intellectual/academic peer in the class, perhaps more if there is more than one class in a grade. This permits at least some peers for skill-based regrouping, so that a teacher can teach at that level. Only one out of every 924 (or 495 on the SB scale) score at the 99.9%ile. Even correcting for the effect of competitive admission, it's unlikely that a child scoring at this level will have even one peer if any in an entire grade. It also illustrates the problem of testing at the tail of the spectrum -- at 99.9%ile the variation of score is actually quite great. The number of kids scoring at a particular point at 99.9%ile, can actually range from 1 out 924 to 1 out of hundreds of thousands. The 99.9%ile actually doesn't tell you a lot in some ways. Many kids who test at this 99.9%ile level actually have hit some aspect of the test ceiling (like my daughter who hit all three verbal subtest ceilings). Hitting the ceiling means that the test didn't really test the child to the full range of their ability. Or, to use an analogy, it's like you try to figure out whose the best shooter on the basketball team by looking at everyone's free throw ability, so you never find the kid who has the awesome ability to throw free shots AND make the 3 pointers consistently -- because you never ask them to try. All of these -- 80%ile to 99./9%ile -- are "scoring well," but the test result really has quite a different significance depending upon exactly "how well" a child does. As for your comments about margin of error -- it's around 10 points or 5%. This has a greater impact at the higher level. For example, the difference at the 80%ile is a difference between 1 out of every 4 at or above and 1 out of every 7 at or above, which is manageable in a classroom. But at the 99%ile, the difference is 1 out of every 21 (at the 95%ile) to 1 out of hundreds of thousands, somewhat manageable if the error really turns out to be entirely downward in a particular case. But, it's very unlikely, barring a complete meltdown or illness, that someone gets a "fluke" score way above or below this range. By the same token, it's really quite unlikely that an 80%ile child will get lucky and answer enough questions correctly to reach a 99.9%ile score -- maybe one question here or there might be a lucky strike on a particular child's knowledge or strengths, but the higher score requires getting a number of consistently harder questions correct. |
Anonymous
Good post! Thanks. Lots of insightful thoughts there, so I will need to think about it further. One quick quibble:
I think you mistakenly looked at the 95% ratio (1:18-24) when you meant to look at the 99.5% ratio (1:215). This sort of blunts your first point about peers in the class, since if you are correct then anyone over 95% would have no peers in the class, and it sure seems like a lot of kids in the area with scores over 95% are getting into schools. Nevertheless, all your other points are good ones that I want to think about some more. Thanks for posting. |
Anonymous
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I have heard that the Montgomery County public system is a better fit for highly gifted children than are the top tier privates - can anyone comment on that personally? (And, thank you, but no need to post links - I've read the other threads, hence the info. Just wanting any btdt or new insights.)
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