Test score help, please.

[sophie4r]

Hello all-
I'm so happy to have found you!  My son is in 10th grade (15 yo).  He has recently been diagnosed with ADD and has convergence insufficiency.  He has had difficulty reading since the 3rd grade, it became obvious once he started reading books without pictures.  He has been tested a number of times, some of his subtest scores over the years have been, it seems to me, very low.  He's scoring in the average range overall, but I think the subscores hold clues to why he has such hard time reading and his comprehension is so low. I don't know how to help him, any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.  Here's the latest batch:

Subtest/raw score/scaled score/%ile rank

CTOPP-2
Elision/17/4/2
Blending words/29/13/84
Phoneme isolation/24/8/25
Memory for digits/20/11/63
Rapid digit naming/16/6/9

WRMT-III
word identification/31/80/9
word attack/17/79/8
basic skills cluster/159/78/7

TOWRE-2
sight word efficiency/74/89/23
phonemic decoding efficiency/28/79/8

GORT-5
rate/38/8/25
accuracy/28/6/9
fluency/66/7/16
comprehension/37/8/25
oral reading index: index score:86 %ile rank: 18

A little older, but has concerned me:
TVPS-3
visual discrimination/14/125/95
visual memory/15/130/98
spatial relations/15/125/95
form constancy/13/120/91
sequential memory/8/85/16 (in 3rd grade scored in the 1st percentile)
figure ground/14/130/98
visual closure/10/100/50
overall standard score-116
overall percentile rank-86

[fc11]

I do not know too much about standardized myself, but the subscores seem to be close to my 16 years old. She also has ADD and reading difficulty, and the neuropsych told us she should be classified with an IEP..say, I am reading based on my limited understanding with my kid's deficits is that the basic skill cluster showed a weakness in decoding skill, hence reading is difficult and it shows in your son's phonemic decoding efficiency weakness.
What was the evaluator's recommendation? Does your son have a dyslexia eval?

[healthy11]

sophie4r, first, let me welcome you to Millermom's forum. My son is now a 20-something, who has graduated from college and has a full-time job. He was formally diagnosed with ADHD, dyslexia, as well as dysgraphia as he was entering high school. (The ADHD was recognized in elementary school, but they kept blaming his reading and writing difficulties on his lack of attention and interest, rather than acknowledging he had underlying learning difficulties.) My son was given some of the individual tests you listed, including the GORT and TOWRE, but not the others.

It's understandable that you have concerns about your son's low sequential memory score on the TVPS-3, but do you have any other memory scores (ie, from a WISC) to compare it to?

I don't mean to pry, but who determined that your son has convergence insufficiency? Has he received any treatment for it?
www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/convergence-insufficiency/basics/definition/con-20033203

Additionally, what kind of evaluator determined that your son has ADD, and which tests did they administer to come to that conclusion? (The test results shown above are all reading-related, not IQ or achivement tests.)
How is your son being treated for his ADD? If he uses medication, was he taking it at the time he was given the above tests? concordspedpac.org

Like fc11, I wonder if your son has a diagnosis of a reading disability (not all states recognize the term "dyslexia") ~ can I ask which state you live in? Does your son have an IEP, or just a 504 Plan? Is he in regular public school classes? What kinds of remediation/accommodation does he current receive? Lastly, what does he ENJOY doing when he's not overwhelmed with school?

Sorry to have more questions than answers at this point, but I'm trying to get a better understanding of his strengths as well as weaknesses, so as to give you more meaningful advice.

[sophie4r]

Fc11 and healthy11, thank you for your replies. I'll try to fill in some gaps. As of right now my son has a 504 in place for ADD (and restless leg, sleep used to be an issue, much better now). He just started meds about two months ago. He hasn't been tested at all since starting meds. He is in regular public school classes. He does not have an IEP and receives no remediation. He does have limited accommodations (really not very helpful...only extended time for "projects" whatever those are (really, what classifies as a project? No time specified, so it's up to the teacher. I understand time and a half is usual, but not in our school system. He had a study guide for a biology test that was 10 pages long, no extended time to complete that because it's not a project and the teacher thought he gave the students enough time to work on it, zero understanding of the ADD kid). I digress. the school system thinks he's doing just fine.

School testing in the 5th grade found the convergence insufficiency. Pediatric ophthalmologist confirmed it. He went through some PT for it a few years back, "pencil pushups", without good results. I'd like to know more about effective treatments if you know of any.

The psychologist who performed the neuropsychological evaluation diagnosed my son with ADD. I just looked at the report and she only summarizes (no tests names listed or scores. I'll need to get those.) such as (here you see some of my son's strengths, very visual, except for visual sequences):
SENSORY:
Visual:
Visuospatial: Performance above the expected level for perception and discrimination of line
orientations, at the 84th percentile.
Performance above the expected level for the identification of locations of component parts of
photographs, at the 91st percentile.
MOTOR-INTEGRATIVE:
Visual-Motor: Performance above the expected level for copying increasingly more complex designs,
above the 75th percentile.
Very superior performance for copy of a complex figure, at the 95th percentile.
MEMORY:
Visual:
Learning: Overall performance below the expected level for recognition of designs and recall
of their locations in a grid, at the 5th percentile. Borderline performance for correct designs, at
the 16th percentile, and performance well below the expected level for correct locations, at the
1st percentile.
Immediate: Low average performance for recall of a complex design, at the 25th percentile.
Produced most of design with 90-degree rotation.
Delayed: Borderline performance for designs and their locations in a grid, at the 9th percentile.
Performance below the expected level for correct designs, at the 5th percentile, and for
borderline performance for correct locations, at the 9th percentile.
Average performance for recall of a complex design, at the 37th percentile. Produced most of
design with 90-degree rotation.

Last time the WISC-IV was administered was 7th grade (I believe it was part of the neuropsych eval, but I don't have the names of tests or raw scores)
Verbal Comprehension Tasks Scaled Score 13 years
Similarities 10 Average
Vocabulary 12 Average
Comprehension 10 Average
Perceptual Reasoning Tasks Classification
Block Design 13 High Average
Picture Concepts 11 Average
Matrix Reasoning 10 Average
Working Memory Tasks
Digit Span 7 Below Average
Letter-Number Sequencing 8 Average
Processing Speed Tasks
Coding 7 Below Average
Symbol Search 9 Average

Verbal Comprehension 102 Average
Perceptual Reasoning 108 Average
Working Memory 86 Below Average
Processing Speed 88 Below Average
Full Scale IQ 98 Average

***My apologies, this is getting very long!****
So the not-so-short answer to the ADD diagnostics is, I'm not sure. I suppose I never questioned it because he has always been so inattentive and distracted. He's taking adderall now and it seems to help.

As I mentioned above, my son is a very visual person. He pays attention to the way things look in a way that's beyond my understanding. He spends way too much time playing video games, he's involved in scouting, has a few close friends he likes to spend time with and is thinking about taking up trap shooting.

I live in Connecticut, so dyslexia is real here, but just in the last year or so. This is a problem, as schools don't seem to know how to evaluate a child. I was hoping the neuropsych eval would address dyslexia and I asked specifically about it but without explanation, read in the report that my son is not dyslexic. I don't have much confidence in the psychologist at this point. I think I need an expert, which of course is why I'm here asking you folks.

[bros]

You can get the district to evaluate him, them dispute it and request an Independent Educational Evaluation, or IEE

[sophie4r]

bros, thank you. He just had a neuropsych eval this past August. The reading and an auditory processing evaluation last April. Are there tests that specifically help point to dyslexia that he might be missing? I know there isn't one specific test for it, and I understand there are different variations of dyslexia.

My concern is that the neuropsych eval took 6 months from the time I called to make the appointment to having a report in hand. It'll take another year if I go through the school system and another independent evaluation. If that's what needs to be done I'll do it (will start the process now), but I don't trust the school system (have an older child with generalized anxiety disorder, couldn't go to school for two years, the answer the school team came up with is to withdraw him...as in drop out, which is illegal in Connecticut), and I wouldn't know where to go with dyslexia concerns, as in where to find an expert for an IEE.

[melvinhoward]

Dec 28, 2016 20:24:42 GMT -5 sophie4r said:

Hello all-
I'm so happy to have found you!  My son is in 10th grade (15 yo).  He has recently been diagnosed with ADD and has convergence insufficiency.  He has had difficulty reading since the 3rd grade, it became obvious once he started reading books without pictures.  He has been tested a number of times, some of his subtest scores over the years have been, it seems to me, very low.  He's scoring in the average range overall, but I think the subscores hold clues to why he has such hard time reading and his comprehension is so low. I don't know how to help him, any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.  Here's the latest batch:

Subtest/raw score/scaled score/%ile rank

CTOPP-2
Elision/17/4/2
Blending words/29/13/84
Phoneme isolation/24/8/25
Memory for digits/20/11/63
Rapid digit naming/16/6/9

WRMT-III
word identification/31/80/9
word attack/17/79/8
basic skills cluster/159/78/7

TOWRE-2
sight word efficiency/74/89/23
phonemic decoding efficiency/28/79/8

GORT-5
rate/38/8/25
accuracy/28/6/9
fluency/66/7/16
comprehension/37/8/25
oral reading index: index score:86 %ile rank: 18

A little older, but has concerned me:
TVPS-3
visual discrimination/14/125/95
visual memory/15/130/98
spatial relations/15/125/95
form constancy/13/120/91
sequential memory/8/85/16 (in 3rd grade scored in the 1st percentile)
figure ground/14/130/98
visual closure/10/100/50
overall standard score-116
overall percentile rank-86

sophie4r, did you try using any reading tools?

[hsmom]

Hello sophie4r

I am no longer on the site regularly, but I just had the time to take a look. There are some significant scores on some of the tests that your son took. 

Subtest/raw score/scaled score/%ile rank

CTOPP-2

Elision/17/4/2

Blending words/29/13/84

Phoneme isolation/24/8/25

Memory for digits/20/11/63

Rapid digit naming/16/6/9

Research has shown that majority of children who have problems with rapid digit naming (or Rapid Automatic Naming-RAN) have problems with reading. They are correlated.  


WRMT-III

word identification/31/80/9

word attack/17/79/8

The above test shows that your son has equal problems with reading real words and nonsense words which require sounding out the phonemes.

basic skills cluster/159/78/7

I don't know how the psychologist came up with the above numbers as word identification and word attack are subtests to the basic skills cluster on the WRMT-III.


TOWRE-2

sight word efficiency/74/89/23

phonemic decoding efficiency/28/79/8

Unlike in WRMT-III, the above test shows that your son has more difficulty reading nonsense words than sight (real) words. He has problems decoding phonemes (sounds) in words.

The above scores, I think, would flag possible difficulty in reading (dyslexia) and the need for further testing. 


I found the links below on the Wrightslaw web page. Peter and Pamela Wright are attorneys who take on special education cases. Their web site has a lot of information on all aspects of Special Education in schools.  www.wrightslaw.com/


But here are information regarding reading tests and assessments.

www.wrightslaw.com/info/test.read.farrall.htm

www.wrightslaw.com/bks/aat/ch6.reading.pdf

The above chapter comes from a book that Mellissa Farral wrote with Pamela and Peter Wright. www.wrightslaw.com/store/aat.html

[hsmom]

Sophie4r, you also wrote: 

Last time the WISC-IV was administered was 7th grade (I believe it was part of the neuropsych eval, but I don't have the names of tests or raw scores)

Verbal Comprehension Tasks Scaled Score 13 years

Similarities 10 Average

Vocabulary 12 Average

Comprehension 10 Average

Perceptual Reasoning Tasks Classification

Block Design 13 High Average

Picture Concepts 11 Average

Matrix Reasoning 10 Average

Working Memory Tasks

Digit Span 7 Below Average

Letter-Number Sequencing 8 Average

Processing Speed Tasks

Coding 7 Below Average

Symbol Search 9 Average



Verbal Comprehension 102 Average

Perceptual Reasoning 108 Average

Working Memory 86 Below Average

Processing Speed 88 Below Average

Full Scale IQ 98 Average


WISC-IV is the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-fourth edition. When a psychologist does a complete evaluation, s/he usually also tests for the child's academic achievement, usually with a test called WIAT, but a school psychologist may use Woodcock-Jonson Tests of Achievement. Did the psychologist give your son either one of these tests? 

If so, would you be willing to share with us his scores? That would give us a fuller picture of your son's learning differences.