That being said, this is just under a 1.5 SD difference between his ability and language achievement, which approaches significance as a discrepancy. (Math is pretty much in line with the ability measure.) My first question would be, do you see this IRL, as well (that his math is stronger than his reading/writing)? If this appears to represent a clinically significant difference (not just a fluke of testing), then I would be inclined to view it as more "real" than just an artifact of lack of exposure to higher-level instruction, mainly because it is in the language area, rather than the math area.
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.
And, btw, I would not describe all of his ITBS results as quite mediocre. 90th %ile in math is not too shabby (+1.3 SD).
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.
Interesting Belin-Blank presentation on use of CogAT and ITBS in gifted selection process (cut & paste into search engine). Doesn't recommend using the CogAT composite score, but the Verbal paired with Reading, and the QN paired with Mathematics:
faculty.education.uiowa.edu/docs/dlohman/icn_full_day_using_cogat.ppt?
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!