Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Cogat & NNAT: Pros and Cons

My school district is changing its gifted identification tests. It has been using the Raven for about the last 20 years. Two tests it is considering are the Cogat and the NNAT. (Also the WISC, but I can't see that being a realistic contender because of the cost. I am assuming it would cost a lot more because it's individually administered. Am I correct?) I was just wondering what would be some of the pros and cons for these two tests. I have the opportunity to give my input and I'd like to know what I'm talking about.

CogAT:

-measures aptitude in more domains, which provides more options for selection criteria (C/V/NV/Q).

NNAT2:

-believed to be more culturally-fair (though some research disputes this).
-usually shorter

Thanks, aeh. I like the idea of having more information about the different domains of aptitude. I think that can be useful for every child that takes this test, not just to identify for the GATE program.

My son's district uses both the NNAT and the cogat, so that's also an option. They screen everyone in second grade with the NNAT and those who do well (they select the top 5% in the grade - in my child's school this includes scores below the top 5% nationally) are nominated for GT evaluation, which includes cogat testing. Parents/teachers can also nominate for evaluation regardless of NNAT scores. Kids can qualify with high enough NNAT or cogat scores, plus other criteria. They also identify kids as gifted in math/science (high quantitative cogat score), Language arts/social studies (high verbal score), or both (high overall). At this point they don't really do anything with that information though as it's a general enrichment program and not subject specific.

They used to just use cogat testing for the entire second grade (and other grades as nominated), but I'm told that the testing took too long so they switched to screening with the NNAT first.

FWIW, I have yet to meet a gifted kid IRL for whom the CogAT was accurate. I know a few kids who did not score highly enough on the CogAT to qualify for a gifted program (in our district, 98th percentile), but private one-on-one IQ testing showed otherwise.

Accordingly, I think it's important to recognize that not testing highly on the CogAT does not mean a kid isn't gifted, and if CogAT is the only method of initial identification, a significant number of kids may be missed. I assume my view may be particularly applicable to students with twice-exceptionalities (using that term loosely), especially relative processing speed issues.

Snowgirl, I've actually experienced the opposite. The kids that I know in our gifted program who are there despite low CogAT scores but because of high private test scores have had lower scores on achievement testing such as MAP in later grades. For my kids, the only weird thing about the CogAT was that they scored slightly lower on the verbal section than on the non-verbal section, but later IQ testing showed verbal to be the highest.

I don't know the current MAP scores for the other kids I had in mind (none of whom participated in the full-time gifted program in our district), but as for my own kids, on the CogAT in 3rd grade they scored lower on the quantitative and nonverbal sections than they did on the verbal, which also is the opposite of where their strengths lie - that's funny that you also saw a reversal.

In any case, their CogAT nonverbal and quantitative percentiles weren't even anywhere remotely near the 90s (one was so low that the teacher laughed at the inaccuracy). So far, they are still scoring well inside the 99th percentile on the math MAP at the end of 6th. (They did not participate in the full-time gifted program either; they've been in a charter all along)

Was this using a timed version?

Yes. Timing was my obvious concern before the test, as both kids have low coding subtest scores (single-digit percentiles). It's been a few years obviously, but if I recall correctly, they both said that they finished it (I'm not sure whether that's true). So, I'm not sure what the problem was.

Gifted does not equal high test scores particularly if there is something else in play.