Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment CogAT vs. ITBS

This appears to be what my district is doing, only they are not taking averages, like averaging the verbal CogAT and the Reading achievement, and then averaging the quant CogAT and Math Achievement. They want ALL of the scores to be above the 98th percentile. If they have enough spaces open for the highly gifted program then they will take EITHER quant/math or verbal/reading, but still, both scores in each category need to be above 98th percentile. So someone could be a math genius with achievement scores at 99.9th percentile but make a few careless errors on the CogAT and not qualify for gifted services.

I don't understand why they are even bothering to test all of the kids if they are intending to give one student services. I thought our district was bad, in that they stick students in fake "cluster groups" which don't actually do anything. They get money from the State and are required to identify gifted students, but in terms of actual services, they don't need to do a thing.

Thank you! Yes, his language is generally depressed compared to his mathematical reasoning. He doesn't use particularly advanced vocabulary, was late to start talking, didn't read until he was 6 despite his own effort, etc.


No, mediocre was a bad word choice! After getting over the sting of not making the cut-off, I'm quite proud of the areas where he did better than 80% of nationally normed 2nd graders. He's not in a high-achieving district, and I've actively worked not to exceed the classroom level of content by too much when we work at home (going deeper not farther). I certainly didn't expect him to ceiling any of the tests, so a SD or so above the norm is great.


Embarrassingly, this is a little reassuring. I didn't want to be wrong in my perception that he's at least mildly gifted, but I've known so many kids (including ones who scored much lower on CogAT) who got close to 99th percentile across the board in ITBS. I remember doing so as a child myself. But it's also a little annoying. Since I don't trust my district administrators to understand gifted education, I feel like their use of high ITBS results as a qualifier is another mark against them.


I found a (high SES) district near here that does something like this, assigning a point value to the percentile ranks on both tests and then using this combined picture to use as their guideline for qualification. DS still wouldn't hit the mark, but it makes a little more sense to me than letting the ITBS composite and CogAT composite each be an all-or-nothing benchmark.

Thanks so much for your analysis, it clears some things up for me!

So, as a follow-up, I plan to send the district superintendent (who is also the special services director this year, apparently) a note politely requesting my son's full score reports for my information. While I'm at it, is there anything I could mention about improving this process? It feels like their approach is a waste of resources and I don't understand at all how they expect to improve the education of a 1 in a 1000 student by identifying them in this way. There are certainly no gifted education specialists in the district, and the student won't receive the benefits of peer interaction, so...what's the point?

I'm also wondering if I could request a meeting with the school psychologist who evaluated the results, and see if she had any light to shed on the ability/achievement gap.

Does anyone have any advice for moving forward and communicating appropriately with the school or the district?

I do have to say that we're lucky in DS's teacher this year, apparently he was able to have a full-fledged "argument" with her over a math problem this week (they came to the agreement that the problem was poorly worded) and in general she's really gone to the mat to differentiate his work. Between that and the work we do at home he's probably getting his needs met adequately. His sister, though, might need subject acceleration by the time she's in first grade next year so I need to figure out this whole administration hierarchy and how to work with them ASAP.

And...yikes. Just read that the decision must be appealed within 10 business days. I think we got the letter last Tuesday, so today's the 9th business day. I still don't plan to appeal per se but in case they rethink things at all it's better sooner than later.