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What has your experience been with the CogAt and LD's?


rafiki
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My experience with the CogAT: probably not worth your time for a child with LDs if you're looking for an accurate indication of ability. For one thing, it is a timed test (as is the ITBS).

 

My two boys took the CogAT at school. In particular, the boy with the greater strengths and weaknesses, who is rather 2E-ish but has no formal diagnosis even after neuropsych testing, had a 96 percentile spread (yes, you read that right) between his math percentile on the NWEA MAP (an achievement test) (99th) and his percentile on both the nonverbal and quantitative sections of the CogAT (3rd). For the other boy, the spread was only maybe 30 percentiles. In part, there is a difference in how the tests are administered - on paper, separate pieces of paper, compared to the MAP on the computer. And, of course, one is an ability test and one is an achievement test, but one is not supposed to be able to vastly outperform one's ability, KWIM.

 

I think your experience of three times/three very different profiles indicates that the CogAT is not a reliable indicator of ability for your ds.

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I have one kid with dyslexia and ADHD and another with processing speed issues. The kid with dyslexia scored well below his true ability level on the CogAT, but the two times I gave it to him, the subtest scores were consistent relative to one another. The other kid has been less consistent. The first time I gave it to him, the verbal was higher than the quantitative and the nonverbal was between the two. The second time the verbal was lower than the quantitative and the nonverbal was the lowest. The third time he took it at the local public school and the verbal and the nonverbal were the same and higher than the quantitative.

 

I have to say that I don't think the CogAT is a very good test. I particularly don't think that the quantitative portion accurately predicts mathematical ability. The tasks all require a low level of ability in arithmetic but a high level of working memory and processing speed.

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