Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Sorry another cogat scores question

Hi there,

My 2nd grader was tested on the cogat as a routine thing (everyone is tested) to identify for GaTE services. His scores came in but they don't give us a lot of info.

It is just age percentile rank

Verbal 99
Quantitative 99
Nonverbal 99

Test composite 99


Can I ask - does this mean he got 100% on the test? In his IQ test he scored 99.9 but this doesn't seem to give those decimals

Can I derive any other information from this little bit of info?

Many many thanks in advance.

It does not mean that he got 100%. It does mean that his score is at least 135 in each part, but it could be higher. (I believe the CogAT goes to 160.)

It means that out of 100 randomly selected students in the US, you could expect to find only 1 student scoring higher than him.

I would suggest pursuing above-grade level testing for him. 99th percentile of 2nd grade doesn't tell us much as far as where his actual challenge level is. Is his challenge level the beginning of 3rd grade? Or is it 7th grade material? With a 99 percentile score, we have no way of knowing.

I suggest asking the school for their written acceleration policy and gifted/talented services. The cogat will identify him as gifted/talented, but nobody knows yet "how" much advancementt he needs. Hopefully the school's policies address this question. My son's elementary school called it a "child study", part of which was giving above grade level tests.

He has been IQ tested and scored 99.9 and achievement testing was 99.9 too. These were done because he is special needs and has an IEP. Because of his additional needs we can't accelerate him but he will qualify to get into the gifted class with these scores.

I thought I once read that if you got a question wrong it moved your score to 98% but I might have misunderstood this

Actually, it means that out of 100 representative students his age in the US, 99 would score below him. He would be equivalent to the 100th student.

Otherwise, I would agree with others above.

It is unlikely that you will obtain more information from the CogAT than you already have from the comprehensive evaluation (IQ, achievement, etc.) conducted for his IEP.

Changes in raw scores do not always have an obvious correspondence to changes in percentile, as it depends on the standardization process, where the change occurs in the curve, etc. Given your existing, much richer, data set from the IEP eval, I would not expend too much time and energy thinking about the CogAT.

Thank you. That make sense. Can I ask, does the combination of 3 x 99 equal a greater score than the 99 alone?

I wish they would provide further information.

I'm not incredibly worried about it but the GaTE office said they wouldn't consider previous testing when making decisions about what type of accommodations as they only use the cogat to determine this.

I would imagine that many children would get a total 99 score but maybe less would get the combination of all 99's

Does that make sense?

Not per se. That is encompassed by the Total score of 99th %ile. It does seem intuitive that fewer children would earn 99s across the board, but there isn't sufficient power in the test to tease that out for sure. This is where moving to out-of-level testing might help to spread the distribution.

I would imagine that they don't provide additional information because the CogAT doesn't reliably generate a great deal of detail, as that is not it's design intent.

Hi there

So I got more details for the scores and I have a question.

Scores are

Verbal 142 52/54 correct
Quantitative 144 50/50 correct
Nonverbal. 136. 48/52 correct

Composite 147

Can I ask, why is quantitative 144 with all questions correct?

Is the perfect score 150 or 160 on this test?

Also weirdly he scored better on the math section but is more so gifted in language arts.

Many thanks in advance.

1. Max'ing out on the scaled score with all items correct is another example of hitting the test ceiling, and shows yet again that this test doesn't have sufficient range to distinguish learners at or above your child's level.

2. The hypothetical maximum scaled score is, I believe, 160, but, as noted in 1., not every age bracket allows for anyone to reach the max score, due to the insufficient ceiling of the test.

3. The difference between the lowest and highest scores you've listed, let alone the very minor one between math and language arts, would not be considered particularly significant.

These remain, of course, extremely strong scores all around. My observation above also holds, which is that his individually-administered assessments are much more likely both to accurately reflect his ability, and to provide detailed information about his learning, than the CogAT is.

IQ tests are not tests like a school maths tests. They are tests like a blood work-up. Perfect scores and number of questions correct aren't really the point. Your child is obviously very bright. The scores get him into school programmes. If you want more or better info you need a better test instrument. It may be worth it to apply for DYS but for now it may be better to see how the school handles it. If they do really well further testing may not be needed.