I've requested to have my daughter re-tested for the CogAT in the fall because they tested her without giving us a chance to prepare. There are books for it but I wonder if there are other options available.

They did that because you are not meant to prepare for it... other than a good night's sleep, I suppose.

We had a long thread about this in the past. There are prep questions promulgated by the publisher, but they are just a few, designed just to familiarize test takers with the question format, and designed to be administered by the tester, not parents. You're not supposed to crib for the CogAT.

Ditto! You don't prep for these type of test.

If you feel that the test is an underestimation of your dd's ability, I'd be more inclined to have her retested on an actual IQ test than retested on a group test. Would the school take outside test scores, can you afford to do IQ testing, and/or would the school be willing to administer a true IQ test (they'd need a licensed person such as a psychologist to do so)?

I highly doubt that they'll retest her on the CogAT. It's poor testing practice to retest students (or adults) with the same instrument after such a short amount of time has passed. They may give her a different IQ test, but I can't see them agreeing to give her the CogAT again, so "prepping" her for that is a waste of time.

As others have said, prepping kids in any way for ANY type of standardized test isn't necessary. The test is normed against other kids who didn't receive any type of advance preparation or practice. An individual test may give you more info and a slightly more reliable score, but practice and prep isn't necessarily and can even be harmful because kids feel more "pressure" to perform when they take the actual test.

I agree with the other posters. Given that the CogAT is a group test, it might help to do an individual test.

My son recently took a test that can't be prepped for, beyond a few practice questions that the publisher provides. The practice questions helped a lot, because they told him what kind of format to expect and also reduced anxiety. But prepping by using a big book or a course wouldn't have helped.

It probably depends on the school and you're right that it is poor testing practice to do so. However, I do know of at least one GT coordinator local to me who has given kids the CogAT, OLSAT, and then the CogAT again within a matter of months when they missed the 95th percentile on one area cut-off for our GT programming. I'd agree that the scores are highly suspect at that point, but it does happen depending on the school.

What I'd remind myself is that the goal is ultimately to ascertain the child's needs and the right placement for the child not to get a high enough score to reach some artificial cut-point for a program. It gets hard, though, when others are prepping, retesting, etc. and it becomes such that other kids of similar ability are placed in programming for which they, ultimately, don't qualify either. That tends to leave the regular classrooms with kids with less pushy parents and lower achieving kids, which may not be a good fit depending on your child.

Thank you all for your input. Let me first state that I am not a pushy parent (I'm a concerned and involved parent) and I find it rather unkind to use the word cribbing for my attempt to just familiarize my child with the question format, a format that is not part of the regular curriculum. There will be 1 year and 9 months in between the 2 tests. I agree with Cricket2 that my goal is to ascertain my child's needs and the right placement for my daughter, not to get a high enough score to reach a cut-point for a program! She is in the higher percentiles (that's what her NNAT test showed as well) and I would like to make sure that if she qualifies that she can at least participate in the part-time AAP program if not the full level 4 program. I like the suggestion of an individual test as well.

There are many ways of "preparing" for a test. In my children's school, every child was prepped the week before the test. They were given a description and sample of every problem type so they could learn what would be expected of them and ask questions in time to clear up any potentially disastrous misconceptions. Not only do I not see any harm in this, I think that it diminishes distortions created by cram schools and leads to test results that better reflect ability instead of familiarity. Did your daughter's peers have a similar "chance to prepare" that she did not?

Here's a nice discussion of test prep on Hoagies Gifted, by Aimee Yermish: How to prepare for testing

Yes, but I think the main point is that the test is standardized against thousands of other kids who also weren't familiar with the question format in any way, so a lack of preparedness on that point should not be a factor in a child's score.

Someone created on a list of CogAT preparation books on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Abilities-Test-Preparation-CogAT/lm/R1DE9PK4L9WKN8 . Some of the books have favorable reviews from parents who were not preparing their kids for the CogAT. I don't know if these books work, but I don't see much harm in trying. If a gifted program is not right for your child you can take her out.

The standardized conditions for administering the CogAT are to have just as much preparation as the test publisher provides, which is quite a lot, actually. (A psychologist I know points out that the SAT is quite a good general mental ability test precisely because all test-takers have the same opportunity to find full-length practice tests before taking the SAT for keeps.) For a LOT more about the background of how the CogAT was designed, see the test author's faculty webpage, with many documents free from the downloading.

http://faculty.education.uiowa.edu/david-lohman/home

So really admission isn't by giftedness at all. It is simply who gets the highest marks in an admission test. In which case why not give them a test and call it a high achievers class rather than playing lip service to the notion of giftedness?

I was talking to some other parents in our gifted chapter who said they had their kids practice for the CogAT on the computer and their scores went up a lot the second time. These kids are in the gifted magnet. The district itself says it's an "ability" test not an IQ test. But then they call it a "gifted" program. They should just call it an "Honors" program for high achievers and leave it at that.
If some people prep their kids and those are the kids who get in, I would do it as well if prepping raises scores. Luckily I didn't have to do that because the district said they'd take outside WISC scores.

My ds hated the OLSAT. I know different test. It would be like pulling teeth to have him prep for a second dose of that. He does not mind MAP testing, he says it is getting to take too long. He did not mind the EXPLORE either. He hated the OLSAT and it showed.

But—I would definetely make sure he knew the format. I don't know I would go further then the sample questions provided. I don't know, Maybe I would.