Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Huge difference between cogat and itbs

My son qualified in Phase I of our districts gifted testing due to his 97 in the Quantitative Age Percentile but didn't make it in Phase II. Since he has taken these tests he has been diagnosed as dyslexic which helps me understand some of the cogat scores. What I don't understand is the vase difference of the scores between the two tests.

On the cogat his scores were:
Verbal Age Percentile - 43
Quantitative Age Percentile - 97
Nonverbal Age Percentile - 77
Composite Age Percentile - 77

However on the ITBS he scored:
Reading Percentile - 1 (yes, that is a 1)
Math Percentile - 9 (yes, that is a 9)
Raw score reading: 3/27
Raw score math: 10/35

I've never claimed my child was the smartest in his class but the ITBS is indicating that he needs remedial math. This doesn't fit what I see him doing because he just started 2nd grade and can do all the math with ease. (We have him working on a 3rd grade math class at home and does this work with no problem.)

I've talked to the district person for the gifted program and I'm getting blown off. I don't want to keep pushing the issue if I am just misunderstanding something but I just can't make these 2 extreme differences in the test results make sense.

Any insight would be appreciated!

I don't know your tests but if it is a fill in the bubble job is it possible he skipped a question and therefore all the answers were in the wrong place? The right answers could be from before the error. Or is he the type to make patterns with the answers or massively overthink and confuse himself? Also is the second percentile for all kids or just the ones that got to phase 2. Being in the 9th percentile of the top 10 percent of students is different than being in the 9th percentile of all students.

I think the first thing you need to do is ask your ds about the test. You can ask him if he read the questions and tried to answer honestly. When my ds 11 was seven, I had him privately tested. I told the tester he was advanced in both reading and math. After he finished the test, he came back with first grade math scores, and completely failed reading. My son had read the first Harry Potter book at four, and was currently doing pre algebra at home. I spoke to my son, and he said the questions where for babies, so he darkened the circles randomly; he made a game out of it. I went back to the tester and asked what test they gave him, and they had given him a first grade test! Needles to say he was retested, with a higher level test and did exceptionally well. Sometimes children are unpredictable!

I don't know about the itbs or why he did so poorly, but if you have a CogAT report, look at it and see if he answered all the questions. If he didn't that could explain the lower non-verbal and verbal scores. My dd had very large discrepancies and I had to look closely at the report to figure out how many questions there were and how many she attempted. She finished one section but not the others.