My daughter scored >99th% for reading on the Iowa test in reading but even lower for verbal IQ on the CogAT (<100 IQ). She does not have a below average verbal IQ, period.
I looked at what is on the CogAT and if a child doesn't understand the format of the test questions, they could very well do poorly just because of that. For instance there is an analogy section with verbal items. If a child has never seen analogies, but they are expected to realize that the first two words are related, and the third and fourth words need to be related in the exact same way, they could screw up that entire section by always picking the "trick" answer. 5 minutes of practice and a child could go from scoring zero on that section to getting them all right. The CogAT website actually says that kids should be prepped and there is a study guide for teachers to use with students "to level the playing field". Ok, how does that level the playing field if only some teachers bother, and others don't? I am not sure how a WISC is formatted, but I'm guessing the same type of thing can happen, where a child doesn't really understand what is expected of them (for instance that they have to be specific in their answers). And I think also the brighter kids will over-think answers, esp. on tests like the CogAT, and get them wrong because of it. Because the "right" answer seems dumb or overly obvious to them so they try to rationalize why a different answer could be correct.
