Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment COGAT questions

I just got DS8's COGAT report and am confused by several things.

The report is blank for the Age Stanine, Grade Stanine and Grade Percentile Rank. Does this mean these weren't calculated or does the school just not want to share with parents?

Does anyone know how the ability profile is determined? It says his ability profile is 8A. Do local percentile scores play a part in the calculation?

His scores are:
Composite: 131 / 97% APR / 84%Local
Verbal: 127 / 95% APR / 88%local
Quantitative: 129 / 97% APR / 82%local
Nonverbal: 126 / 95% APR / 81% local

Does anyone know how the local percentiles are calculated (age based, grade based, something else)?

I also think his scores were hurt by the fact that he didn't answer 7 questions in the quantitative section and 3 in the nonverbal section. His processing speed on the WISC-V, although above average, is his weakest area. Unfortunately, the school only looks at the local percentiles when making GATE decisions.

Does anyone have any idea how much of an impact unanswered questions have on the results?

Any other thoughts/comments are also appreciated.

I know it is ridiculous! We actually have the same issues with Cogat. We are in a very good school district with a mean composite of 111 (50%ile), instead of 100, so what looks like 95% nationwide is only 84%ile locally. On top of it, my daughter is affected by being an older student in the class (November bd), so overall her age local scores look a lot worse than her slightly younger peer in a nearby district (our friends' child).

As a result, the gifted program in our SD is super competitive and doesn't serve its purpose really. I don't know what to do with it, but arguing with the Director of assessments in our school district got me nowhere - he says that 20% of students score at 95%ile or higher, but the gifted program is only designed to accept 7%!!!

Have you talked to people at your son's school? They're the best ones to tell you why those rankings were omitted from the test.

You might also want to do some an internet search. For example, I did a search and found some very good information about the test (e.g. here and here). The second one discusses the profiles.

I don't have any knowledge of the technical scoring details on the CogAT, but fwiw, those are great scores and they are strong across all categories. I have no idea if local percentiles are used specifically in your school district, but it sounds like you're in a high-performing school district where there are a large number of higher-ability students - so whether or not local percentiles are used in determining eligibility, the general pool is larger at high percentiles, hence the cut-off bar for program admissions is probably going to be higher than in a not-so-high performing district.

I looked back and saw that your ds has had an IEP for speech disfluency issues, and that you've had concerns with timed tests. The CogAT is a timed test. It would be interesting (if the information still exists) to find out if he ran out of time, and if the questions he missed were questions he actually got incorrect or if they were questions he hadn't attempted to answer yet when the time clock ran out.

If you do think time is an issue for your ds, it might be an issue worth pursuing a request for accommodations - but otoh, to do so you'd need more than just a parent's gut feeling that time is a factor - you'd need assessment and documentation from testing either through the school or a private eval.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Ours just came back too and did not include that information either. The local numbers (I believe) are for the district. We are in a high performing district as well,


The ability profile is determined by stanines (loosely correlated with deciles). You should google, but I believe 8A would indicate something like he was around 85-95th percentile and "A" indicates similar scores across the test.

DD left about half of the quantitaive questions blank. (she has slow processing and ADHD and can be perfectionistic so it was a perfect storm). Most of the questions that she actually answered were correct. She was very young for her grade because she was grade accelerated. So she was 40 some percentile for grade and around 50th or 60th percentile for her age, for Quantatative. She also left a lot blank on nonverbal (probably about 1/3 blank) and was 60th-70th something percentile. I remember reading somewhere that the average kid will answer half of the questions correctly. We ended up having her take the WISC and her GAI was 150 vs 118 or something on the CogAT.

For us "first time" is the problem. The district used to give the Cogat every year but they cut back due to concerns of "too much testing". So the Cogat is now only given in 2nd and then not again until 5th grade. They use the Cogat local percentile to determine GATE eligibility and it MUST be above 90% LOCAL to even be "considered". So this means DS is shut out of the program and doesn't get a chance to take it again for another 3 years!

Oh, and they refuse to accept outside testing.

That stinks because dd's cumulative increased a bit between first and second testing

Do you think the cutoff is hard or do they have additional reviews for kids that are near the cutoff? I believe our district (which is very proud of itself and its gifted program) does have some flexibility

Drives me nuts when districts employ rigid protocols and cut-offs on a single test to determine eligibility rather than looking at the whole child and what the needs of the child are. There are a lot of kids with special needs or circumstances that don't do well on the CogAT and other kids may simply be having a bad day.

I know what you mean. We have the benefit that dd has taken these tests in consecutive years and have seen the variability in scores...if we only got a score from and "off" day of testing, we would have a much different view of her capabilities