CogAT and ITBS

[jennifer augustat]

I recently received my 11 year old's standardized test scores and I am wondering if it is likely that she is gifted or if she is well taught child who is good at test taking. Of course I understand that neither of these tests are IQ tests.

Her Iowa test scores give her a composite score of 99% for National Percentile Rank. The CogAT composite score is 99% as well. Verbal is 129/ 97%, quantitative is also 129/ 97%, and nonverbal is 147/ 99%. She has a reading Lexile Range of 1230-1330.

Thank-you for your opinion.

[Kevin_K]

Likely to be gifted---certainly worth further testing if there are any gifted programs that she would qualify for with the testing.

[Nancy Bosch]

I think the 147 nonverbal is the most telling--the nonverbal skills cannot (IMHO) be taught. The bottom of the top 1% on the WISC is 135 and usually a good indicator of gifted ability. Cogat scores tend to run higher than an individual test.

[Kevin_K]

Actually, the nonverbal test-taking skills can be taught, as can any test-taking skills. They are less often taught than the verbal components, so tend to be a measure that is not as correlated with education.

[Nancy Bosch]

It's been my experience over 25 years of teaching gifted that there are some skills that cannot be taught, maybe improved but not mastered. Some kids have it, some don't.

[jennifer augustat]

I'm wondering if you think I should have her tested for giftedness. Is there a test better than another, or does school work prove more than anything?

The reason I ask this is because I have thought some of placing my daughter in public school as we are approaching levels that are harder for me to teach. Our educational background is this, I pulled my daughter out of her private school after kindergarten because she was clearly bored. The teacher absolutely would not give her harder work to do and insisted that they would never provide harder than grade level work until the 7th grade no matter what. The public school system insisted that even though my daughter made straight A's in kindergarten, that she would have to be placed in the class according to her age. That meant repeating kindergarten because she went to kindergarten at 4 years old. I wouldn't do that to her. Even for other elementary grades they insisted she would have to be placed at age level even though she has top scores from the Standford and the IOWA. So I've decided to home school her ever since. Maybe with testing they would change their mind and place her in a higher grade.

This brings another question. Maybe I am teaching her well enough for now and could wait until high school before enrolling her in a school again. What do you think? If I do that then what would be the point of having gifted testing done? I do have real goals. 1. I want to see her get into a good college. 2. I want her to have the ability to really explore her educational interests. 3. I want her to be focused and disciplined enough to learn the things that are necessary to learn even though she doesn't like them. 4. I never want her to see school as a drudge and boring again. 5. I want her to always try her best. (I can tell when she is hoping to just glide by and not think about it).

My plan has always been that if she is making an easy "A" the work is too easy and so I make it a little harder until we find a point where she has to work a little. She was multiplying by 5 and easily dividing and doing fractions at 6 years old. She is starting algebra this Fall having passed pre-algebra twice (with two different curriculums) with flying colors as I wanted to make sure she had a solid foundation.

For history this year she spent a whole semester on the Civil War which was my choice and the second semester was her choice. She decided on India and wrote a 21 page typed report with maps and photos. It covered ancient India through the British Empire and was excellent. Her latest interest is Russia and as usual she wants to really get to understand the culture and history not just skim it. I figure this is good for her because she is learning writing skills, library skills, history, grammar, and geography all at once. Although maybe not so good for standardized tests because I doubt either Russia or India will be on any standardized test. But, she covered state history, Colonial America, the American Revolution, and the Industrial Age in years past. She loves the history channel anyway. I think she knows Greece, Rome, England, and Egypt like the back of her hand since in various years she was stuck on them.

In reading I had her in a 8th grade American Literature text. It was really too easy reading, but I kept her there anyway because I felt it was important to understand literary terms as well as more in depth meaning. She made straight A's on all the tests. I'm moving her to a 9th grade literature course and I plan on our reading several high school level books together and going over the meaning with literature guides.

She'll be studying a Biology text and workbook at the 7th grade level this year.

I plan on spending a semester on the U.S. Constitution and government with a 9th grade text. We'll be reading original documents and talking about the meaning. We'll also look over various Supreme Court cases. She has an interest in listening to government news and often follows what's going on. She was into the campaigns for President and even wanted to see one canidate when they came to town.

For vocabulary she will move to a 10th grade workbook and a latin word root computer game.

Spelling and grammar are not favorite subjects but we'll do them anyway at 8th grade level. Spelling for some reason is truly hard for her. This is why I have a policy that unless the word is correct on the weekly spelling test it will keep reappearing on tests until she gets it right. Then we will go back every so often and test the long term memory of words. I know its so hard for her, but oddly she learns them faster while in motion. She spins and spells or jumps and spells so much that it would seem hard to imagine one could learn that way, but oddly she seems to remember it better after repeating the order of letters after me while spinning. I can't imagine doing that in school!

For writing I'm going to have her write some more poetry like she did last year. She came out with some very thoughtful poems and some funny ones and she likes writing it. I'll also guide her through mystery writing.

She has really shown a desire to learn architecture, so I got a text book on that. We'll do a once a week class studying styles, drawing, and building. Last week, she built out of a kit a four foot tall Empire State building working tirelessly all day till she finished it. I'm thinking I could use her desire to build to good use and have build bridges and test the load and sway. Maybe she could explore designing a home. This could develop math skills and creativity. She says she wants to design office buildings and high rises and build models of them. That's fine and I'll be happy to help her.

Then there is volleyball and her PE class. She looks forward to those too.

She loves art too and can easily recognize all types of periods of art. When we go to London this October we'll be spending time looking at all that fabulous art and she will be loooving it. She doesn't like painting art pieces herself though.

It seems there are too many interests and I wonder how we are ever going to learn all these varied things that she wants to do. Are all children interested in learning all kinds of things at once? Thanks for reading over my post and offering advice as you are educators.

Jennifer