Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Kindergarten CogAT Scores Very Low

I have always said my two daughters have opposite brains: My 9-year-old is in the 99.9%ile in verbal abilities but can't sequence events to save her life and is very average in math, while my 5-year-old has been a comparatively reluctant reader and talks like Junie B. Jones (although she is now in the 99%ile in reading according to her 222 ISIP score, with no reading practice at home) but begged for her own Dreambox Math account and worked on her own initiative to the first grade level the summer prior to kindergarten (at 4 years old). She is a very young kindergartner (doesn't turn 6 until July after her kindergarten year) but has "Met" every standard and scored very high on every assessment she has brought home. She has an obsessive, internal desire to count things (she counted 86 links in a chain holding a chandelier at a funeral we attended this past weekend), is very organized and the first to get ready every morning (without prompting), and even walked at 11 months even though she was born 3 months early and spent the first 6 weeks of life in the NICU (compared to my older daughter who didn't walk until she was 17 months old!). She notices EVERYTHING, even having very strong opinions about what she wears as early as she could communicate, and exhibits hypersensitivities typical of gifted students (everything is too itchy, too loud, etc.). She has been very unhappy to go to school every day this year, which I assumed was because she was bored because she idolizes her teacher, has lots of friends, and--let's face it--who doesn't like KINDERGARTEN?!

Imagine my complete shock, then, when we received her advanced academics letter yesterday listing her COgAT 7 Verbal Age Percentile as 65 and her Quantitative Age Percentile at 67! No score was listed for the Nonverbal Age Percentile--even though there is a spot for this on the form, and no other information was provided (stanine, SAS, ec.). Obviously, she was denied entry to the Advanced Academics program.

I am generally not "one of those parents": I am quicker to identify weaknesses in my children than strengths, but I was truly floored by these test results. I know the test was conducted over multiple days (I don't know when it was administered, but she would come home saying things like, "Oh, I did that with Ms. (GT Specialist)") and in a group setting. Testing was administered based on parent/teacher referral, not to all kindergartners like many schools districts do. (Oh, and she is left-handed and her left arm was in a sling during the testing window, but that shouldn't matter since students just had to bubble answers, right?) Also, I am a teacher with several years experience working with gifted students, and I was in gifted programs throughout my school career.

My question for the forum is: are there additional questions I should be asking or testing I should have done? I have searched the Internet for information about CogAT, and it appears to be a very widely used test with generally reliable results. So, I probably need to just accept that she is not academically gifted in spite of all the evidence to the contrary and move on. Still, it is such a shock that it seems I should do SOMETHING.

I appreciate any insight others on this forum can provide!

I would search this forum for previous discussions about CogAT. There are def. kids who were highly gifted who have done poorly on CogAT. I think given everything you have said here that it is unlikely the score is a good representation of your daughter and that at some point it would be useful to pursue private testing. I am in the same boat.

The CogAT at that level is very weird. The test is given aloud, and for the verbal section, the answers are in the form of pictures. So not only does the kid have to know what the word means (or whatever), but she has to interpret the pictures correctly as well. Unfortunately, I can't remember specifics about the quantitative section at that level.

I really bugs me that school administrators give CogAT results the weight that they do. Have they ever even *seen* the test? Have they taken it themselves? I particularly think that ascribing "mathematical ability" to a child who has done well on the CogAT's quantitative section is particularly ridiculous. All it takes to do well on that section (particularly at the lower levels) is speed with fairly simple arithmetic. To have that one test--consisting of three 10 minute subtests--determine whether a kid qualifies for gifted programming in math is absurd!

So, as you can see, I'm not a fan of the CogAT, particularly when it is used to make high stakes decisions.

If the results from the CogAT don't align with what you actually know about your daughter's abilities, then I would view the results with a healthy dose of suspicion. Since the results are being used to make placement decisions, I would definitely consider becoming "that parent" for a bit.

My DD took the CogAT in kindergarten and her scores were around the 90th or 95th percentile but I was never given a report or shown specifics. I was told that her highest score was in non-verbal ability and lowest in verbal. Whatever the scores were the district was happy enough with them that they grade accelerated her to first grade (achievement testing in math and reading was also done). A little over a year later she had to take the CogAT again as part of the gifted screening process. I don't think the kindergarten version was timed and it was given to her one-one-one. But this next one was a group test and it was timed. Her scores ranged from around the 60th percentile for her age for math to the 97th percentile for verbal. I looked at the report and could see that for the quant and non-verbal sections, she left a large percentage of problems blank. She just ran out of time. But the district scored the test anyway. Her scores weren't nearly high enough for the school for highly gifted so I took her to a private psych to do the WISC IV. That showed her non-verbal and verbal composite to be over the 99.9th percentile. Her verbal score was actually much lower than non-verbal, the opposite of the second CogAT (same as the first). I would not take the CogAT at face value. If you suspect she is gifted, take her for private testing or see if the school psych will give her an IQ test. You could ask for the WASI, it is much shorter than the WISC. Or ask for just the perceptual reasoning and verbal portions of the WISC to get a General Ability Index. The other 2 secitons of the WISC (working memory and processing speed) don't correlate at all with reasoning ability, which is what schools want for gifted programs.

I am not a fan of the CogAT either, and my EG ds scored considerably lower (percentile) on the verbal portion of the CogAT than he has on any other type of testing (WISC, achievement testing of many different types etc spread out over many years). When I asked my ds about the test after he took it, he told me how he reasoned out the answer to some of the questions and I could see that he'd gotten the answers incorrect but was using high-level reasoning... it's just that the questions were assuming some types of learned knowledge that he hadn't been exposed to, he used totally logical and complex thinking to come up with an answer, but the answers were wrong.

The test results your dd receive don't match what you know of her school performance, so that's one reason as a parent I'd look for more data if you need test scores to get into higher level programs at school (and you believe she belongs there - if you weren't thinking she needs more, I wouldn't worry about the scores or further testing). Anyway, that's what *your* motivation is for further testing, but chances are the school is going to hear the same thing from other parents too - some of whom have good reason to push for more testing, some of whom may simply be "that pushy parent". So my next piece of advice is, you can't worry about being "that pushy parent" - you need to advocate for your child. It might help to think kindly of "pushy parents" - to be honest, even kids who are on the higher side of average most likely could handle and would benefit from having more challenge than is offered in most typical classrooms.

Sooo... what I also see in your post is something that you should be able to take back to the school to request *different* testing (if there is an option for appeal) - your dd's arm injury on the day of testing, combined with the discrepancy in testing results vs classroom performance. If your dd was given the test in a group setting, it was most likely timed. It may not seem like filling in a bubble is a big thing, but have you tried timing filing in a bubble with your dominant writing hand vs the hand you don't write with?

If the school doesn't have an appeal process, or if you don't want to bother with it, private testing will probably give you more insight into what your dd's relative strengths are. JMO, but I feel that there is a lot more information included with an innate ability test such as the WISC than you will receive with an individually administered learned ability test such as the CogAT. The CogAT is widely used as a screening tool for gifted programs, but I suspect that is due to factors that make it easy to use as a *screening* tool.

And last thing - if you do pursue IQ testing and the #s don't come out as high as you'd expect - don't let that stop you from advocating for the academic challenges you feel your dd wants/needs. Follow your child, not a #.

Best wishes,

polarbear

BTW--blackcat is right, the kindergarten version of the CogAT is not timed (neither is the 1st or 2nd grade version).

I don't think I would take any one test as definitive, especially if it conflicts with what you otherwise observe. It is just a single data point. Also, she is still very young - my DD did not take the CogAT until she was in 2nd grade!

Also, as deacongirl pointed out, some children who score very highly only other tests (including the WISC), do poorly on the CogAT. Your DD might do extremely well on other tests.

I don't know anything about the test but I'm pretty sure filling in bubbles with my non-dominant hand during an unfamiliar situation would throw me.

Thanks, everyone, for such thorough and thoughtful responses; they are all so helpful! I will pursue individual testing to see what we end up with.