Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Anyone ever retest with SCAT

I would probably wait until next year. If you retest now, you are sending your DD the message that she didn't do well enough. That may just increase her anxiety. I would wait until next year, and then do the mini practice tests with her before she tests. Emphasize that it doesn't matter how she does. If she wants, she could set herself a reasonable goal (e.g. trying to complete, say, 40-45 problems on the math test).

Just wanted to chime in with my family's experience. Ds in second grade last year took the SCAT and qualified for math courses at CTY, but missed verbal qualification by one point. He was a very inexperienced test taker (attends progressive school where they never call anything a "test"), and he took his sweet time on all of it, finishing neither section (only got to mid thirties with each section I think). Even though he was only interested in summer camp programs for math/science, I thought we should have him try again on the verbal (without letting him know he had missed it by one point). So he took it again fairly late in the season (May I think) and this time I told him "try to work faster, see if you can finish!" On the second go-round his verbal score was substantially higher than math, and he was recognized for his high scores at one of the CTY award ceremonies. I thought it was interesting that the verbal score in particular jumped so much when he made the effort to finish. So, if your child did not finish and just missed the cutoff, I would recommend having the child try again. For my ds it is all good practice. We seem to have an issue with inconsistent performance in general, and we are trying to figure that out (which is another story). But in the meantime I am delighted ds has qualified for all the programs for his age group at CTY. This summer he will do a program "inventions" and he is really looking forward to it.

HannahZ, thanks for that. Yes, I think if she had finished she would have qualified. Like the PP mentioned, she had difficulty, even on the practice tests, with not wanting to do the problems logically vs computationally. We struggle with this on her homework too, so it did not surprise me.

Partly I am wondering if there is an advantage to retaking the math test now as a third grader vs waiting until next year when she would have to take the 4th/5th grade test.

Do the scores carry over to the next year? Will she need to retake the SCAT next year anyway or will her scores from this year count for next summer?

If I am not mistaken, she can take the test as late as June 10th or 15th, and they will still use the 3rd grade cutoff for qualification. If you wait until the fall it will be a different test and higher cutoff as well. If you are going through JHU CTY, I know the only thing you need to do soon is request the retesting ID number (they send you a new one) which you then use when you register her for the SCAT test. You could request the retest number, then wait and see how you feel about signing her up to retake the test. I personally think it is great practice for the kids, but one has to be careful to present it in a positive way, so the kids don't feel unnecessarily stressed. Good luck!