Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Help with Cogat

I haven't come here in a long time, I got so wrapped up in my son's other issues that I lost focus on the gifted side.

My son's IEP team agreed that he should be in accelerated math. The gifted math teacher does not agree. She's basing it on the quantitative part of the Cogat. His results were

verbal 140 stanine 9
quantitive 97 stanine 5 (items 52, attempts 30, correct 27)
nonverbal 137 stantine 9
VQN 129 and a stanine of 9.

I looked at the interpretation online and it said that those with low quantitative scores often score low in math in other tests. My son does not, he consistently scores in the 95+ percentile. I feel this is reflective of his disability not his ability. He has Tourette's as well as anxiety, especially when it comes to math. He has more tics when he's anxious and also becomes more unfocused. He performs his worst when doing timed math tests.

I wanted to run it by the test experts here to make sure I'm interpreting it correctly. I plan to contact a member of the IEP team who is incredibly helpful and he also said quite strongly he should be in gifted math. I don't want him in a place that won't fit but I fear if speed is what makes it fit then he'll never make it although intellectually he can do it.

My DD had a similarly bad math CogAT score (it wasn't much over 100) but the compuerized math acheivement testing the school does is over the 99th percentile, or several grade levels ahead. So obviously she is able to understand math concepts. Like your DS, she only answered about half the questions. The ones she did answer were very accurate. A kid has to finish the test in order to get a high score. She is slow with ADHD and processing speed issues, and that has nothing to do with actual math reasoning ability. Tell them that section shouldn't have been scored since he left half of it blank. It's not normal to have that big of a gap.

I honestly don't understand how the quantitative section of the CogAT has anything to do with giftedness in math (I've seen multiple levels of the CogAT, BTW). Quantative ability, ie, ability in arithmetic calculation, is very different from actual mathematical ability.

Thanks! He had a 85-90% accuracy in the other categories as well and his scores were what I'd expect so I do think the incomplete is what lowered it.

I emailed her and explained. I was surprised by the instant he can't come in response based on one test score. Up until this point everyone has been able to easily see when test score is related to his tics and no one has ever questioned his ability before. I guess I've been lucky so far. I'm going to see if I can either get that section pulled or he can be allowed to finish the test. We're writing the new IEP at this time so it is good timing in that sense.