Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Cogat vs. WISC

My daughter was identified at age 4.5 as GT. In our current district children are identified as GT math science and GT LA. She has been identified as both. Long story short, she has taken numerous tests over the years (she is now 10), but no IQ test. There is an option in out district to attend a highly gifted school, but only if a student has an IQ of 140 or more. The district will not administer an IQ test to my child because none of her Cogat scores were 140 or higher. However, I don't think our daughter tests as well in a group setting, and her teachers always refer to her as highly gifted. Do any of you have a child who scored much higher on the WISC vs the Cogat? Trying to determine if we should make the investment and have her tested privately. TIA!!

Yes!

DS9's scores on both the WISC and CCAT (the Canadian name for the Cogat) have huge variations between the various components. DS's FSIQ is barely gifted (and actually matched the CCAT Composite score) but his GAI is much higher and luckily that is enough for him to get in to the program here.

The other gifted kid in his previous class had much lower CCAT scores than WISC scores and is much more even across components. It didn't surprise me that my DS with his crazy 2E WISC profile tested poorly on it but it shocked me that his classmate did.

Both of my kids (one PG, one MG) scored significantly better on the WISC than the CogAT.

Yes it's worth it if you can - especially if teachers are recognizing it. My son didn't perform well on the cogat but ended up having a high GAI on the WISC with gifted (but lower) FSIQ-Good luck!

Yes. DD was given the CogAT at school, so I never received all of the scores. She had a 99% composite, with a composite V+Q (the number our schools use) that was much lower than both her FSIQ and GAI on the WISC IV. What was interesting is that the "V" or verbal score on CogAT appears to have been extremely high, much like her VCI on the WISC. The WISC IV also appears to have had a higher ceiling than did the version of CogAT that she took. HTH!

Where I live, about half of kids qualify for the gifted program through private testing with the WISC--after scoring too low on the CogAt. However, there is much debate about the ethics of this (e.g. Is this fair to families with low to medium amounts of financial resources? Are certain private testers considered "good" by subsets of parents because they "help" children to score well? Is the gifted program best suited for kids who score well on the CogAt in comparison to the WISC?) Another thing to consider is that 140 is a pretty high bar. Your child can be considered gifted with a score of 130, but would not qualify for the program that you describe.

DD's FSIQ and GAI on the WISC IV were both much higher than her CogAT scores, but a lot of this is due to the fact that she didn't actually finish the CogAT, she left a lot of it blank because of the timing factor. Kids who work slowly or have slow processing speed don't tend to do as well on the CogAT because they don't answer all the questions.

DS scored in the 140's for perceptual reasoning on the WISC and about 8 or 10 points lower for non-verbal ability on the CogAT (but I think he actually finished the CogAT so it should be a more even comparison than what happened with DD).

DD had a huge difference between her FSIQ and GAI, and the district accepted her GAI, so you should check if the 140 means FSIQ or GAI (or either). She would have ultimately qualified with her FSIQ as well in conjuction with high achievement test scores so it didn't matter in her case, but she would not have tested into YOUR program if they only accept a FSIQ of 140 (her FSIQ was around 135 and GAI was 150--the slow processing speed brought down her FSIQ).

My psychologist (well the university clinic) will not calculate and provide a FSIQ if the GAI is more representative of the child's ability (and states that FSIQ should NOT be used in this case). She only listed the GAI and told anyone using this report to use it in data used for decisions (I am sure the school psychologist could have quickly calculated th FSIQ in her head if she wanted to).

It is funny that processing speed should not be held against him but my second son processing speed is his wow factor.

I was told that the GAI was the more accurate composite score for both of my children, but I have always just given the full results when we've needed to share them. In our case, they are both high enough (although the GAI is approximately a standard deviation higher) that they are not being restricted from programming either way, so I am not going to argue. Both of my DC have higher VCI and PRI than WMI or PSI, with each child having a different relative strength in the index/non-reasoning scores.

I think it's significant that CogAT is NOT an IQ score (is your school confusing the two?)...doesn't it say that on CogAT's own materials? (Sigh) People in our district confuse the two also though - it is not an uncommon mistake, even by school administrators. I agree with blackcat - 140 sounds like a high bar for CogAT. Here it is on CogAT's website: http://www.riverpub.com/products/cogAt/support.html#4

Our district wanted, I think, a 139 composite on the Cog-AT and if it was a bit lower than that they wanted 98th-99th percentile for reading and/or math on an achievement test as well. So a kid either had to have the 139 or they had to be above the 98th percentile for both CogAT and achievement.

I think the program they developed is a terrible fit for a lot of kids, because they expect the kids to be good at everything--reading, math and writing, and if they are not, they will struggle. A kid who is really excellent in one area, like math, but only moderately gifted in others, has no where to fit in.