Be aware. You may become totally overwhelmed when you get results of special education testing on your child. There is a lot of "stuff" on that report! And much of it sounds like a foreign language to many people.You get one piece results from Intelligence part of test. This is extremely important information, but know that it will most likely come in disguise.
One of its disguises, or aliases, might be "Broad Cognitive Ability". Another may be "Aptitude." But, basically, they are measures of same thing - your child's ability to process and learn information. So, for sake of keeping things simple, let's just call it "aptitude."
As I've stated many times, in order for a child to be considered learning disabled, he has to show an average "aptitude" for learning. He must have same ability to learn as well as any other child of his age or grade. An average aptitude score would be about 100, with anything between 85 and 115 being in average range.
There are many different tests that measure a child's aptitude. One of these tests is WISC-III. The Performance, or Perceptual Organization, section is part that measures aptitude. It is divided into subtests, or smaller tests, and they assess different things that make up a person's aptitude.
Another common test used to measure aptitude is Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery - Revised. The aptitude section of this test is called Tests of Cognitive Ability, and overall aptitude score is called "Broad Cognitive Ability". It also has smaller tests called subtests, to measure aptitude, but they measure aptitude in a little different way than WISC does.
There are other tests to determine your child's aptitude that don't involve reading or writing. Sometimes these tests are given if there is a language problem that might interfere with getting a true picture of child's ability.