Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Co-Gat in 7th?

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.)