Marked Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised (WISC-R) verbal-performance discrepancy commonly leads to the assumption that such children have brain pathology or cognitive disorders. Children without brain dysfunction may also exhibit wide discrepancy, but a discrepancy score of 30 is now assumed to occur in only 2% of the population. This investigation presents an 11-year-old child showing a 54-point discrepancy between the Verbal--VIQ and Performance--PIQ scales of the WISC-R. Results of wide ranging testing and other considerations strongly suggested that this child didn't manifest any kind of brain dysfunction. It was concluded that the particular academic environment of the child, an alternative school, exerted a very strong influence on her results on the WISC-R. This conclusion is further supported by the results of a follow-up evaluation, done one year after the child had been transfered to a traditional school, which revealed a WISC-R verbal-performance discrepancy of only 12 points. (Author)