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Can anyone help me figure out what the heck happened to my son's scores? My son was nominated and took the Cogat in first grade. His composite was 95. This year all second graders took the test. We just found out his composite is 67. How could his percentile ranking fall so much in one year? Is this variation normal?
Maybe it was a bad day when he took it in 2nd grade? Perhaps he didn't take it seriously. That's my guess at a 67. It could also be that he guessed well the first time. Who knows? It could be a combination of reasons. 95 is below avg IME for 2nd graders, but that was as a first grader for him.
I'm surprised they had him take it two years in a row.
Maybe it was a bad day when he took it in 2nd grade? Perhaps he didn't take it seriously. That's my guess at a 67. It could also be that he guessed well the first time. Who knows? It could be a combination of reasons. 95 is below avg IME for 2nd graders, but that was as a first grader for him.
I'm surprised they had him take it two years in a row.
95th percentile is below average? My numbers are the percentile rankings, so from 95th percentile to 67th percentile. Sorry, if I was not clear about that. The SAS scores were something like 126 (1st grade) to 107 (2nd grade), which from what I could tell was going from high on the "above average" category to middle of the "average" category.
As a general note, I find it odd that a test that's used as a gatekeeper for GT programs, if those 1st grade scores were a fluke, almost had him guess his way into the program since he barely missed the cut off then.
IQ scores are not stable in young children. That's the simple answer to your question. IQ scores are the most terrible way to pick out gifted kids, except for all the other ways.
We recently got our child tested, although I'm not sure what test they used, because we thought it would benefit them to be in the program if they make it. But I will take whatever results we get with a pile of salt, because there is no guarantee that the test will show the same thing in a few years.
A lot of children seem gifted or advanced when they are young. However, as they age and the material becomes more complex they are actually average. There is nothing wrong with being average.
FYI-altough IQ is not stable at that age the Cogat is NOT and IQ test.
95th percentile is below average? My numbers are the percentile rankings, so from 95th percentile to 67th percentile. Sorry, if I was not clear about that. The SAS scores were something like 126 (1st grade) to 107 (2nd grade), which from what I could tell was going from high on the "above average" category to middle of the "average" category.
As a general note, I find it odd that a test that's used as a gatekeeper for GT programs, if those 1st grade scores were a fluke, almost had him guess his way into the program since he barely missed the cut off then.
No. 95th percentile is not below average. You wrote that your child got a composite score of 95 which I did not interpret as the percentile rank.
A lot of children seem gifted or advanced when they are young. However, as they age and the material becomes more complex they are actually average. There is nothing wrong with being average.
FYI-altough IQ is not stable at that age the Cogat is NOT and IQ test.
All of our second graders take the CogAT. That and the Naglieri are used to form a pool of students considered for "Advanced Academics". The benchmark score varies slightly each year, but for the CogAT it is usually around 130 or the low 130s.
A lot of children seem gifted or advanced when they are young. However, as they age and the material becomes more complex they are actually average. There is nothing wrong with being average.
Also, a lot of children seem average when they are young but as the material becomes more complex you can begin to pick out the smart ones.
When my oldest took the CogAt in the third grade, I was surprised that she scored relatively low in a math sub-section, as we all considered math her strongest area. Upon closer review, I could see that she had only attempted about two-thirds of the questions. She left the rest blank. When I questioned her as to why, she proudly informed me that she had come across a difficult question, but kept working at it until she finally got it, by which time, she had run out of time. So, she never even attempted about a third of the questions. Oops.
I've proctored at the local elementary school when kids in 3rd through 5th grades were taking end of grade standardized testing. The amount of mismatched answers (filling in the wrong bubble due to accidentally skipping a question) was remarkably high.
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