Look at her score sheet--it should tell you how many questions she attempted. It is very possible she did not finish the test, since it is tightly timed. The Cog-AT, in my opinion, is a ridiculous test and doesn't mean much of anything. My daughter had an untimed version when she was grade accelerated in kindergarten and all 3 of her scores were about the same, but non-verbal was the highest. Her verbal score was only around 87th percentile, I think, while the non-verbal was more like 97th percentile. She had to take it again just over 1 year later (this time a pencil and paper timed version) to determine eligibility for a gifted cluster and the non-verbal score was only around 66th percentile (so it dropped 30 percentile points?!) and her verbal score was around 97th (up about 10 percentile). I don't think Quantitaive was even average and the poorest of them all meanwhile she scores in the 98th percentile on a nationally normed achievement test for math, even being compared to kids who are one year older since she was grade accelerated. She is clearly not poor in math. It made no sense. Then I realized she finished the verbal section, but only completed half of the quantitative section and just over half of the non-verbal section. Hence, the huge gap in scores. It is ridiculous they even scored the test if she left half of it blank. She has ADHD and has focus issues so it was a completely inappropriate test to give her. Teenagers with ADHD are given extended time on the SAT/ACT so I don't know what they were thinking giving a 7 year old with ADHD a tightly timed test. Plus, she will focus on a question and think about it til she figures it out-- a prime characteristic of a bright or gifted child-- which is presumably what they are trying to find out. If they give the kids 20 sec. to answer each question and a child stops and looks at a question for 5 minutes, then they wouldn't be able to finish the test. The CogAt is not going to identify the gifted kids who are careful and take their time and therefore don't finish the test. They have to finish it in order to score in the upper percentiles.
To make matters worse I just spoke to her new teacher and asked what is going to happen in the gifted cluster, and she said, "Well I have two kids high in reading, and two in math..." I said "Which is my DD?" She said reading. I said, "you know she is scoring in the 98th percentile in math achievement, right?" (actually higher than her reading score which is around 94th) and she said "Really? I was just looking at the CogAt and her verbal score was so much higher than the other two scores." It is alarming the way school districts are misusing this test (and actually planning instruction based on bogus results!). Now i need to figure out how to get that test out of her school records.
