I just received word that my ds's school will be giving the Co-Gat test to 7th graders. Have any of you heard of this being done? I'm a bit disappointed because it's such a blunt instrument and it's a bit pointless in my ds's case since he's taken the WISC IV.

I would think the WISC overrides the CogAT? If not, our schools do CogAT testing again in 5th or 6th (did in 2nd grade, so far), for G&T programming. Apparently, a higher percentage of the older students do better on the CogAT in our schools (than do well on the 2nd grade test).

In our district, kids must receive a certain score on the CogAT to be identified as gifted. They won't look at WISC IV scores.

Kai, That's just so wrong, IMO.

If I'm understanding things correctly, I think they're giving it to every kid, which is great for the kids not identified yet. I do wonder though, what about the kids who are already in the gifted program?

Loy58, That's interesting.

Our district uses the CogAT for group screening for gifted programs, even in high school. I don't know for certain, but I suspect the reason they use it is cost - I'm guessing it's much less expensive to administer a group test like the CogAT.

I personally think it's a shame though - especially because our district often only administers and uses the verbal portion of the CogAT and the reading portion of an achievement test as gifted screening cut-offs. I suspect they are missing kids who are high-ability in math and science related skills, as well as simply missing kids like my ds who think so far outside the box they don't ace the CogAT. I've often wondered how different the cohort of kids in our elementary gifted programs in particular would be if the WISC was used as a screening tool for everyone rather than the CogAT.

polarbear

So true, Polarbear. The CoGat underestimated ds's ability quite significantly. He was still identified as gifted but not so high that the WISC results didn't surprise.

KADmom, check out whether your district has published written guidelines. Your state dept. of ed may have some too.

Here the school does use Cogat as a screener. But you can hand them private test results, and if the test is on their list, they accept it. This policy is not well publicized, so it may be worth your while to do some digging.

It is interesting to see how other schools use the CogAT. I guess it will depend on how the school uses the test, and whether they will accept the WISC.

In our schools, CogAT is the one of the various "screener," tests (EVERYONE takes it), and the screening # cut-off is not very high, IMO. They do NOT use the non-verbal portion for screening, although they do have the students take this portion. Then, however, additional tests are added to the "selection" process, including a Wechsler IQ test by the school. The required Wechsler # is higher.

I am not certain what would happen if you approached our school with qualifying scores in advance of the CogAT, but it would seem to make the "screening" to take the Wechsler unnecessary (I get the sense that CogAT is used so everyone does not have to be given an individual IQ test).

Loy58,

That's my point. I think it's unnecessary since he's already been "identified" and he's already been tested. So...unnecessary yet harmless, right?

In my school district they use the OLSAT. BUT there are 3 different ways to identify and one is my independent physiological testing. Perhaps since she has had the WISC IV done they could excuse her from the unnecessary test.

Not necessarily harmless. It can vastly underestimate the scores for HG+ kids and the school could use any diacrepency between the cogat and the wisc against you at a later date.

Agreeing with puffin here. If he doesn't do well on the CogAT, they could decide to un-identify him.

My DD's Cog AT composite was about 35 points lower than her WISC GAI. Most of the problem was that it is timed and she has no sense of time and processing speed issues.
The district said they would take outside results like the WISC but I had to inquire about this. Otherwise they would have just given her the Cog AT again the next year.
I also think there is a time limit on outside test results they will consider. They probably won't take anything that's older than the previous school year. So my DS took the WISC but they probably won't accept that when it's time for him to be eligible for g/t.

Here again--you might want to read the rules. Every district is different. In our district it is hard to get identified and harder still to get services, but once a child is identified, they do not un-identify them later.

The GAI can also be dicey in many places- the regulations on FSIQ vs GAI can be vague, and many administrators don't understand GAI. A full psychologist's report is often helpful, but I know people who have encountered roadblocks on this point.

I'd have to agree with PP, I don't think it is harmless. If your DC already has the WISC scores, I'd inquire first, before having them take the CogAT. If the CogAT comes back lower than needed, some districts with limited space, might use that to try to keep a child out of the program.

It also depends on how high of a CogAT score they are looking for - this varies greatly.

FWIW, DD's CogATs and Wechsler tests (she did NOT take the WISC, but the Wechsler test selected and administered by the school), were consistent, with her individual FSIQ being higher than her CogAT score. As you probably already know, though, this has NOT been the experience of everyone on this board. The CogAT seems to "miss" many children who score very high on a WISC.

All our best to you and your DS!

Yep, believe me, when I had the WISC done on DD I did so with great trepidation, not knowing it would help us. I knew she had processing speed issues before she even took it, so I asked the psych if she could report the GAI and explain in the report why the GAI was needed. Also, I turned in an article to the school with the report stating that the GAI is a better measure of giftedness than FSIQ. I think her FSIQ would have met their cut-off anyway. But with processing speed so low it would have been close. The CogAT and WISC also have different standard deviations so the district was saying that they wanted 139 on the CogAT. DD's FSIQ WISC was slightly lower but equivalent to around 139 on the CogAT if you consider the different percentiles. It's easier to get a 139 on the CogAT than it is to get a 139 on the WISC.

The CogAT supposedly tests nonverbal and verbal reasoning ability, same as the GAI of the WISC, so I'm not sure why a district would insist upon using data from working memory or processing speed. I think most districts simply don't know much about the tests they are administering OR about other intelligence tests. The district's g/t coordinator told me they'd have to look at the math section of DD's WISC to make sure it was above the 98th percentile cut-off they want, just like her math achievement test scores. But there is no math reasoning section on the WISC! Hello? Good luck with that folks.

At this point I'm so sick of even thinking about it, and if it turns out they are that clueless and can't see reason (which hopefully isn't the case but I don't know since I never get straight answers about anything), I don't want DD in their program anyway. Luckily we have other options for enrollment, which I know other people don't.

The problem is that the CogAT really does place a premium on processing speed and working memory. To do well on the CogAT, you need to be *fast* and for some of the subtests, you need to be able to hold several things in mind if you are going to be quick. Frankly, I think the CogAT is more about processing speed and working memory than what it purports to test.

Interesting. It probably catches the high achievers then and misses a lot of 2e kids. I would love to know how many of the younger kids finish it within the time limit. DD finished the verbal section and her score on that was at least somewhat close to the verbal WISC score. But the other two, which she didn't come close to finishing, were way off. Kids who are slow end up basically eliminated from consideration for g/t programs, esp. if the school has really high cut scores.

This is an interesting observation - I have wondered about this myself. Have others noticed a correlation?

Loy58--I sent you a private message

My DD9 has a relatively low PSI and WM, and she sailed through the CogAT with no problem.

Kai, my district has historically used the CogAT and only the CogAT, even if you have WISC or other scores in hand. They claim that it measures a combination of IQ and achievement, and that students need to have both to qualify for the rigors of their program. But they won't let you substitute WISC+WJ, for example. It's really weird. The criteria have changed recently, and I think they are letting students in through other types of testing, but I don't know much about it.

I have read more like Elizabeth states... that it is not a straight IQ test (and therefore, it wouldn't be an even swap for the WISC IV) but no personal experience. I wouldn't find it surprising if at grade 7 some achievement piece would be involved to gain entry into a program.

What I do have experience with is needing to re-qualify for our 'enrichment program' at the end of year 2, 4 and 6 (not sure beyond, our school is preschool - year 12). Given it is matrix reasoning plus achievement across multiple subjects (so a math star who is average in other ways wouldn't make the cut)... kids do become unqualified and vice versa. Doesn't say a lot for the quality of the program or criteria!

Best of luck to you and your son on getting this sorted :-)

Our experience was similar to ElizabethN. DS took CogAT when he was 7.5yo and in 3rd grade. He had a Composite SAS score of 149 -his weakest being the Verbal section and very easily made the cut off for the AG program. He took the WISC a few months later and then we found the FSIQ not even close to the CoGAT score because he has low WM and PS.This was later diagnosed as ADHD with anxiety issues. It could be that when he took the CogAT he thought it was just another test at school and so had no anxiety whereas it was not so when he working one on one with the psych. So it depends totally on the child and I would be make sure that the higher of the 2 scores will be used if he is forced to take the test with his class.

One thing to note--the CogAT for grades K-2 is untimed whereas for grades 3 and up it is tightly timed. So a kid with processing speed and/or working memory issues could ace the CogAT in 2nd grade but do poorly on it in 3rd grade.

This was our experience. DD was given the CogAT when she was grade accelerated from K to 1st. I was never given the scores but was told they were fine for the cut-off they needed to accelerate, and that non-verbal was the highest (same as the WISC given later). Fast forward a year and she was given the timed version with half of the questions left blank, and with results in the average range (except for verbal).

Our EG ds was given the verbal portion of the CogAT as an older elementary student and was given an extended time and oral response accommodations based on accommodations he was already receiving in the classroom and on state testing due to his dysgraphia. In spite of that, he still scored almost more than 20 percentiles lower on the CogAT than he does on the WISC (and he's had repeated WISCs as well as other ability testing so we have no concerns that for some reason he had some one-time outside-the-box accidental really high WISC score). I asked ds what types of questions were on the test after he'd taken the test, and when he was telling me about the questions he was very proud of how he'd reasoned through the questions that he didn't know the answers to (these were all knowledge-based type questions too, not reasoning ability type questions)... and he used absolutely terrific logic in determining his answers... but the answers he'd come up with on the questions he related to me weren't necessarily correct answers. That's the concern I found with the test when I did some digging around online looking or other people's experiences with the CogAT - it's a learned ability test, and students who are HG/+ may use their outstanding reasoning abilities for the questions that they haven't been exposed to in school yet and come up with an answer that isn't technically "correct".

polarbear

That's not a problem that's exclusive to the CogAT, though, polarbear. The neuropsych had almost the same explanation for my DS5's relatively low score on the Picture Concepts subtest of the WPPSI. (Block Design 17, Matrix Reasoning 15, Picture Concepts 8)

I've just been skimming this thread (never heard of CoGat outside this forum) but your post jumped out at me. My DS also had Picture Concepts notably lower than the other subtests in PRI (in WISC-IV). He also had Comprehension notably lower than the other subtests in VCI.

I'm always interested in hearing possible explanations. Is it measuring an actual weakness, or is there a flaw in test design, or is it just noise? (Maybe a topic for another thread.)

From the way the neuropsych explained it, there is a flaw in the test design that sometimes causes kids to score abnormally low, but some kids with a low score "deserve" it, too. It's very hard to tease apart which it is. She gave us an example from the test - there are 4 pictures, and they are supposed to pick the one that "doesn't fit." I won't tell you about the specific example because it's part of a still-current test, but DS5 came up with a perfectly acceptable reason for picking the wrong one - no points. The neuropsych's report said that she thought that that test was too low, because it was significantly discrepant with the other two "Performance" subtests and because he was able to give acceptable-sounding reasons for his choices even when they didn't match the rubric. On the other hand, he just qualified for an IEP and special ed in part because of a problem with his verbal skills (he tanked paragraph comprehension even though he did very well on sentence comprehension and antonyms).

For what it's worth, 22B, our neuropsych thinks that Picture Concepts is somewhat flawed. I'm not sure if it's still there on the WISC-V or not - does anyone know?

Yes ElizabethN it is still there! Maybe this explains how my DS got average on that subset but exceptional on another.... hmmm.

Is the WISC V out now? How long will all of the testers have to convert over?

Thanks for the explanation. (Picture Concepts was on WISC-IV when DS took it a year ago.) I'm skeptical about the value of these some of tests too. Sometimes some of our kids just think differently and it can hurt their scores. Maybe my kid "deserved" a couple of low scores for "inability to think inside the box when required".

DS's highest score was Picture Concepts (19) and he has some expressive language and speech issues so I'm surprised he did so well on it. Block design was the test both my kids had trouble with relative to the other non-verbal tests (with DS because of motor issues). So he had 18-19 on Picture Concepts and Matrix Reasoning and 13 or something on Block Design.

Picture concepts was the lowest subtest score within the index for ds. Interesting...

This was not an issue for my daughter. She did score significantly lower on CogAt in 7th grade, (just barely qualifying for services when she was 99.9% on WISC). But she was doing well with the skip from 5th to 7th. Even if it had been lower I am quite confident it would have had zero affect on her placement.

That's what I'm thinking will be the case for my ds. He also skipped 6th and is doing well.
I really don't think our school system actively looks to end services for kids. I think the child would have to be really struggling in school for them to revisit the state-mandated DEP (Differentiated Ed Plan).

If you are concerned about using that score to discontinue...find out when it will be administered and then schedule a dental cleaning/checkup for that day.

Ha! Good idea, Sweetie.