Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Kindergarten CogAT Scores Very Low

I have always said my two daughters have opposite brains: My 9-year-old is in the 99.9%ile in verbal abilities but can't sequence events to save her life and is very average in math, while my 5-year-old has been a comparatively reluctant reader and talks like Junie B. Jones (although she is now in the 99%ile in reading according to her 222 ISIP score, with no reading practice at home) but begged for her own Dreambox Math account and worked on her own initiative to the first grade level the summer prior to kindergarten (at 4 years old). She is a very young kindergartner (doesn't turn 6 until July after her kindergarten year) but has "Met" every standard and scored very high on every assessment she has brought home. She has an obsessive, internal desire to count things (she counted 86 links in a chain holding a chandelier at a funeral we attended this past weekend), is very organized and the first to get ready every morning (without prompting), and even walked at 11 months even though she was born 3 months early and spent the first 6 weeks of life in the NICU (compared to my older daughter who didn't walk until she was 17 months old!). She notices EVERYTHING, even having very strong opinions about what she wears as early as she could communicate, and exhibits hypersensitivities typical of gifted students (everything is too itchy, too loud, etc.). She has been very unhappy to go to school every day this year, which I assumed was because she was bored because she idolizes her teacher, has lots of friends, and--let's face it--who doesn't like KINDERGARTEN?!

Imagine my complete shock, then, when we received her advanced academics letter yesterday listing her COgAT 7 Verbal Age Percentile as 65 and her Quantitative Age Percentile at 67! No score was listed for the Nonverbal Age Percentile--even though there is a spot for this on the form, and no other information was provided (stanine, SAS, ec.). Obviously, she was denied entry to the Advanced Academics program.

I am generally not "one of those parents": I am quicker to identify weaknesses in my children than strengths, but I was truly floored by these test results. I know the test was conducted over multiple days (I don't know when it was administered, but she would come home saying things like, "Oh, I did that with Ms. (GT Specialist)") and in a group setting. Testing was administered based on parent/teacher referral, not to all kindergartners like many schools districts do. (Oh, and she is left-handed and her left arm was in a sling during the testing window, but that shouldn't matter since students just had to bubble answers, right?) Also, I am a teacher with several years experience working with gifted students, and I was in gifted programs throughout my school career.

My question for the forum is: are there additional questions I should be asking or testing I should have done? I have searched the Internet for information about CogAT, and it appears to be a very widely used test with generally reliable results. So, I probably need to just accept that she is not academically gifted in spite of all the evidence to the contrary and move on. Still, it is such a shock that it seems I should do SOMETHING.

I appreciate any insight others on this forum can provide!