Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Anyone have an iowa accel. scale 3rd edition....

For me, because it's all part of a larger equation, I don't mind people using the CogAT for the IQ portion. They have to have two other tests that also show high levels of achievement and capabilities, plus the rest of the form as well. If your school did CogAT but was refusing IQ testing and you could clearly achieve the 10 points required for that section otherwise, it wouldn't bother me.

Also, the forms also are recommended even for kids with >10 because it can help with other programming. It might even push the issue for the school to pay for something other than the CogAT, depending on the players involved obviously!

For us, all I had to do was put the book on the table in the meeting LOL! They said "Oh we see you've read the Iowa manual, we agree, he's a good candidate." That was unexpected! Had I known that, I would have gotten it from the library!

I would think that someone in your shoes who prepped for the CogAT was acting in their child's best interest. Sometimes you can change 'city hall' and sometimes you can't. I agree that the system stinks.

ROLFLOL!

I think the book paid for itself in this story!

But yeah, how much work the parent is willing to put into the advocacy should count for something.

But I don't want to do that. I may be a stickler for rules, but I don't think that it is a good message to send my child that I am willing to help her "cheat" on an ability test. It would lead her to believe that all I cared about was her being smart enough to get into a program.

I guess that I just don't view the CogAT as equivalent to an IQ test given our experience and anecdotal things that I've heard about the correlation btwn CogAT and IQ scores not being that great once you start moving away from average.

I do agree that the IAS takes more into consideraton than IQ and, like Dottie, I wouldn't be too keen on skipping a MG kid with lower than gifted achievement scores. I have no interest in skipping dd#2 for that reason -- she doesn't consistently perform like a gifted child although sometime she just blows us away. There are, of course, many other reasons we don't want to go that route for her. We've just seen the other parts of the IAS manipulated by parents locally as well and taking out the need for a controlled ability test makes it that much more manipulatable IMHO. Parents have signed their kids up for a bunch of extracurricular activities at the last minute to get the points for being involved in a bunch of stuff, etc.

I really shouldn't get myself bothered about people messing around with things that ultimately aren't affecting me and my kids, though!

I totally understand why it bothers you! For every time a child who shouldn't be skipped is skipped, that creates one of those mythical legend situations that we hear about. You know "One time 10 years ago, we skipped someone and it was a total disaster." It makes it much harder to advocate for our kids in the long run when people take advantage of the system, the research or just plain cheat.

Thanks everyone for your replies. I wanted to see where we scored without the IQ test and based off of all the other "tests". We know DD is gifted but the school pysch. doesn't test gifted kids well at all (from what I have been told) and screws up their scores that go in their perm. record so.... we have considered testing on our own, though the cost is an issue. We were hoping we could make a string case and then if they say we need to have the IQ we will test independ. So.... we shall see! Hopefully the book gives us some help with advocating. I'll let you know . I can tell you they do NOT skip in our school (don't know if they ever have) but if they are against it then they better come up with a darn good replacement as to how we will fix the current situation

I would NEVER consider this iption if I didn't deem it necessary, now would I ever consider it for my other child and you just know what your child needs. I can't understand why someone would ask for it if there wasn't a good reason for it in the first place!

oh, and if I COULD have gotten it from the library, I would have. That would have been a lot easier but not one library in the area (even through inter library loans) had it! Amazing!