blackcat, does your dd have 504 testing accommodations for her ADHD? I am not a fan of the CogAT - my EG ds is one of the kids who tests well on everything under the sun and tested nowhere near as highly on the CogAT thanks to his outside-the-box over-thinking of the questions on the CogAT.
Anyway, one thing we were able to do for our ds was to get him extended time on the CogAT, oral response and tester read the questions to him. He had the extended time and oral response accommodation because he was already receiving those accommodations routinely in the classroom and because they were specified on his IEP (if he hadn't had an IEP he would have had the same list of accommodations provided via a 504 plan due to his disability). This wouldn't have given him extended time on an IQ test like the WISC (where the point of the test is to quantify specific abilities), but they are valid accommodations for learned ability tests like the CogAT.
My advice would be to have your dd tested privately - this will give you several things - a full battery of scores (verbal+non-verbal), most likely a more reliable sense of where your dd's abilities are, a report you can use to advocate for appropriate classroom and testing accommodations, and material you can use to advocate for GATE placement.
Best wishes,
polarbear
