Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Help: Strange Test results on MAPS and COGAT

Does anyone have any insight on this situation?

I just got back from my ds school conferences - he is in 4th grad. He is in the G&T program and has been since 2nd grade. For entrance he scored a FSIQ of 141 (VCI - 125, PRI - 143, WMI - 146, PSI - 103)on the WISC IV test. His strong areas have always been math while he has always scored lower in the verbal areas. I just received his MAPS scores which were
MAPS
Math: 233 (99%)
Reading: 222 (96%)

Then on his COGAT he received
Quantitative: 125!!!! (?%)
Verbal: 150 (99%)
Non Verbal: 130 (which he normally does very well on)

He also took the NJ Ask at the end of last year and scored:
Quantitative: 300 (Advanced Proficient)
Verbal: 228 (Proficient)

His teacher and G&T teacher were flabbergasted as was I. Can someone tell me what this means? Can the COGAT have skewed results? I am totally stumped.

Maybe he filled in the wrong bubbles? Who knows...

Does he need this CogAT for something specific? His verbal score is certainly good... I think that might be the maximum score possible (not sure about that)

I agree with Dottie.

Math is both of my son's "things". Both 99th percentile on various tests again and again. Both >99.9th percentile on tests that report out that far.

CogAT for son #1: 88th percentile

CogAT for son #2: 89th percentile

The CogAT's focus seems to be speed with little else. It's a crime that it is used as a sole indicator of giftedness in so many school districts.

Thank you so much for your response. I'm sorry I haven't gotten back sooner but the weekends are chaos with 5 kids. My concern is the fact that our school is doing away with the WISC IV for entrance and now using a rubric for the "academically talented" program including the COGAT, MAPS, the NJ ASK and the SIGS (which is a parent questionaire that you fill out to compare your child to other children in their class !!). With this new rubric he wouldn't even make it into the Math program at all and with the Language arts he would only make it into their Tier 2 program. I was the committee for this whole process and it is just so irritating and frustrating. When you read the research, here is absolutely no comparison with these group tests compared to individual tests. If it wasn't for the G&T teacher using her own discretion to offer these new services to my son and the 3 other G&T kids from the previous program (who would also not qualify for a lot of the new programs) they would once again be sitting there in class - not that this new program is going to offer them what they need. But something is better than nothing right? So I guess we all just hope that our kids score well because this is what is going to happen when the programs and the definitions of G&T begin to change. And it has completely changed in NJ.

Thanks again and I'd love to hear if anyone else has had any similar experiences and how they have handled it. Myself and the other G&T children's parents asked to have a group meeting with the principal and she flat out refused! We all had a conference call last night to see how we are going to handle this. It has really become a mess . I'll let you know what happens.

Julie

My DD, age 7, grade accelerated to 3rd grade, just took the CoGAT for the district gifted program She scored 127 Verbal, 110 Quantitative and they did not administer NonVerbal.

I had a WISC IV done privately, because we were really feeling crazy about the low scores on CoGAT. She scored FSIQ 149. As explained to me, that puts her at an artficial ceiling (her true IQ is higher) because she hit the ceiling on 4 of 6 reasoning subtests.

With her as an example, and all the similar stories I have read online, I really wonder about the validity of the CoGAT. She told me that she simply did not finish 2 of 3 sections quantitative and 1 of 3 in the verbal. Just not enough time. If you don't answer all of the questions, even if they are all correct, you cannot score in the gifted range on CoGAT.

The Psychologist explained to me that although her processing speed is in the gifted range - 136 - very bright children with high level reasoning abilities, when faced with a new test will not rush through. They take their time, understand each question and make careful answers. That is not allowed on the CoGat. They get 30 seconds for each quantitative question.

I hope this is useful.

I don't have much advice for you, but I will say that my daughter's CoGAT Quantitative score jumped 40 points (from 110 to 150) between two testings, so I don't really trust that test much anymore.

I don't trust the CogAT either, but I can easily see how it would happen. The test is highly dependent on fluency with math facts, so a kid who gets the facts down to automaticity between the two administrations will very likely do much better.

Of course, this is exactly why I think that the CogAT only picks up a certain type of quantitative aptitude. It has completely missed the type my children possess, which is more of a thoughtful, reflective, problem solving type, and less about quick retrieval of facts.

Yup, the CogAT is all about speed.

Does anyone have any links/resources that I could look at that would provide additional information regarding these specific types of weaknesses with the CoGAT? Our district is looking seriously at this assessment, and these comments reinforce my concern that this will skew identification towards "bright" high acheivers and away from gifted children. Is it just me, or does it seem that many of the screeners used to "identify" are more aligned with the "myths" around giftedness than with the "realities" cited in opposition to those myths?