Why Test?

Intelligence testing is one tool used in an overall assessment. Assessment, including I.Q. and sometimes academic testing, allows for early identification and therefore, early intervention.

Given heavy demands for screening within public school systems coupled with limited funds and time, most schools have opted to use group-administered tests as the most cost- and time-effective way to identify gifted students. Many factors influence a child’s performance on these types of tests ranging from distracting noises from other students to difficulty tracking and filling in bubble sheets. Group administered tests measure any of a number of abilities, making it difficult to compare performance between different tests. Moreover, group tests often fail to delineate strengths and weaknesses in a child’s performance and fail to distinguish between a child performing in the moderately gifted range and a child performing in the profound range of giftedness.

The primary function of group administered tests is “Are they in or are they out?” of a school’s gifted program. Assessing a gifted child is so much more than answering this one question. Individual psychological assessment offered by a professional psychologist with knowledge of the complexities of testing the gifted is worth serious consideration.

Parents often seek out testing and assessment for their child:

to better understand their child
to discover the degree of giftedness in their child
for admission into gifted programs or schools
to delineate their child’s strengths and weaknesses
to rule out Specific Learning Disorders in their gifted child
to make decisions about grade placement or acceleration
in order to develop a cohesive parenting approach based on their child’s level of giftedness
to identify (and address) reasons for underachievement
as a starting point for addressing the emotional and/or social ramifications of giftedness

“Scores on individual standardized tests are likely to be more accurate than group measures and to yield higher scores. Group IQ tests underestimate scores for twice-exceptional, highly gifted, and highly creative children. They often complexify questions, reading more into them than the test designers had in mind. They may miss multiple choice questions because they see so many possible options. Individual scales enable children to generate their own answers and examiners can see the sophistication of their thought process. Barbara Gilman in Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children: A Parent’s Complete Guide