Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Well, test scores are in.....

and are a bit confusing. But to those of you who are more experienced, you may understand these:
WISC 1V
Block design 10
Similarities 12
Digit Span 8
Picture Concepts 11
Coding 11
Vocab 11
Letter-Number seq 11
Matrix Reasoning 19
Comprehension 8
Cancellation 10
Scale:
Verbal Compr 100
Percep Reasoning 121
Working Mem 97
Proc Speed 103
Full Scale 108
Here's where I can use some help from someone more knowledgeable.
He said "Typically developing youngsters would be expected to obtain subtest scaled scores at 10 and IQ scores at 100 with percentile ranks of 50. It is 90 % likely that x scores would fall within the above ranges if she were retested with this instrument." I don't know what that means, do you? He also said that he thought that her vocabulary and use of language seemed more "sophisticated and better developed. Thus, I think her verbal ability is actually stronger than scores suggest."
Any help here?

Hi Dottie,
Here are CoGats
Achievement National Percentile Rank
Reading 83
Language 92
Math 94

Cognitive Abilities
Verbal 96
Nonverbal 97
Composite 95

Now granted, I know nothing whatsoever about IQ testing, but based on her Cogats I was just expecting higher scores on the WISC IV test. But the more I learn it seems the more confused I get .
Thanks if you can shed some light on these scores for me!

There should be a Quantitative subest on the CogAT as well. Did they give you that? I would assume that the quantitative portion was somewhat lower since the composite percentile is below both the nonverbal and verbal scores. Still, it should be maybe in the 80s or close to the 90th percentile for quantitative, I'd venture to guess.

Also, were the CogAT score percentiles for her grade level or age? The age percentiles are the ones that would correlate more with IQ. Still, again unless she is really old for grade, I would expect that her age percentile would be well above the WISC scores.

What test were those achievement score from? The CogAT doesn't have an achievement component.

looks like Dottie & I cross posted

eta: this is totally anecdotal, but I have seen kids who really don't seem to be gifted score high (95th percentile approx.) on one subtest or the other on the CogAT. However, since your dd scored high on all parts of it, I'd be left wondering too.

The CogAT publisher does say that it is a test of developed abilities not innate abilities or intelligence. They do, however, say that it correlates with IQ.

No I didn't. I just posted a second response - look up higher !

Dottie,
Here is more info:
CoGat Age Scores% Grade Scores%
Verbal 94 96
Quantitative 73 81
NonVerbal 95 97
Composite 92 95

She was 9 when she took this test (had just turned 9 one month before). She's a bit older than most of her classmates, but about 6 are older than her.

One more thought while I am on a posting spree!

Does your school do any type of test prep for the CogAT?

One of our local schools that has a rather unusual # of kids ided as gifted, IMHO, starts a GT pull out in early elementary (1st) with the higher achieving kids getting enrichment. The enrichment consists of a lot of critical thinking activities that look an awful lot like the types of questions on the CogAT and OLSAT. All of the kids are then tested on the CogAT around 2nd-3rd grade and the kids who've been doing the enrichment classes for a year or two almost always qualify on one of the subtests of the CogAT. (They need a 95th percentile on any subtest). If not, they take the OLSAT and often make it in on that. If not, they may retest on one or the other each year until they do.

These types of practices create situations where scores can come out inflated. If there was nothing like this going on, how about the reverse? Was she ill when she took the WISC? Did she have good rapport with the tester? How experienced with gifted kids was the test administrator?

Cricket,
Private Catholic school so no test prep for gifted was given. Those scores are indicative (supposedly) of what she's learned academically so far. She wasn't ill when she took the WISC IV, the test giver was an older gentleman who I don't believe is ex-perienced in a huge way with gifted. Again, I hated to ask him that question, even though it is an important one, because of the "putting the cart before the horse" idea.
Also almost seems like an elitist question to me, if that makes sense.

How about family history? Do you have many individuals in your family who are gifted? Has anyone else in the family ever taken an IQ test? If her WISC score is well below the general avg for the family, I'd be more inclined to call it an outlier and possibly inaccurate.

Nope, can't count family history because she's adopted! Her birth mom always seemed "very bright" to me, but that's as far as I've delved into that pot. Don't know anything about the birth dad.