We have recently moved to Texas and our children are in public school for the first time. They were recommended to test for the Gifted and Talented Program. DD(9) is very smart, learning comes easy for her and she loves it. She was reading independently at 4 and taught herself to bake at 7. She has journals filled with stories and business plans. She is always asking her teachers for more work and is full of questions. She is a perfectionist and gets anxious at new or surprising situations. She shows several outward signs of being gifted.
She was given the Cogat and didn't score high enough for the GT program. She did score evenly across the board with her verbal, quantitative and nonverbal. The school looks at the objective (cogat scores) and subjective data (grades, teacher inventories, portfolio). Her subjective data was all very high. She gets 100s on nearly everything, both of her teachers scored her very high and her portfolio was ranked high. We have appealed the decision and have requested that she be retested. Her achievement test (terra nova) from 2nd grade scores her 95-99 in all the math related portions. She could sleep through school and still make all As. How do you reconcile the test results and the high performance of a child? Is this poor test taking? What can I do to help her be challenged in school with or without the GT program? Have you experienced this before?
My DD(7) scored high enough on the cogat to earn acceptance to the GT program. She is less of a perfectionist and her scores are only slightly higher than her sisters.
My DS (5) bombed the Cogat, but I feel it was on purpose. He is a horrible test taker. When I can get him to focus, he does wonderful, but if he doesn't care, he just picks answers randomly.
Thank you in advance for your comments!
