Our elementary school claims to know the IQ of all of the students. In the beginning of 3rd grade, they give everyone the Iowa and CogAt test. Any student that scores in the top 5 percent in Language Arts or Math on the Iowa, or over 130 on the CogAt is eligible for the "gifted" program, such that it is.
I agree that this can only be useful in identify the moderately gifted students, since the ceiling on the CogAt is pretty low... anything over 140 is suspect of hitting the ceiling. And I agree with kimck that 40% to 50% of the kids in our school are labeled gifted.
Such IQ testing is great for giving the MG students additional resources. It doesn't do much for the HG+ student except perhaps start the ball rolling for additional testing. The problem that we have in our school is that the teachers seem to think that gifted kids come in one flavor. They fail to see that HG+ kids are different, and need different resources, than MG kids.
Does anyone here know how a 140 score on something like the CogAt compares to a 140 score on the WISC? I know that the ceilings are different between the two tests, and that the CogAt is just a rough approximation, but I didn't know how the actual scores compare. For instance, I know a 140 on the CogAt could really be a 160 on the WISC due to ceiling effects. But can a high score on the CogAT, say 140, turn out to be 128 -135 on the WISC? Our school seems to think that a high score on the CogAt is the same as a high score on the WISC, and that Davidson-level scores are a dime a dozen.
I just wondered if this was why the schools think that there are so many peers for HG+ kids present? We are told constantly that DS9 is clearly gifted, but that he has many peers at his school.
