Reading Your Child’s Cognitive Abilities Test Profile

1. Reading Your Child’s Cognitive Abilities Test Profile Bonnie O’Regan Advanced Learning Program Facilitator Greenwich Public Schools February 5, 2014 (snowdate: February 18, 2014)

3. CogAT: Cognitive Abilities Test What is it? What information does it give us? How can we use this information?

6. Comprehending problem situations Detecting similarities and differences Making inferences Making deductions Classifying and categorizing objects, events, and other stimuli Creating and adapting problem-solving strategies Using familiar concepts and skills in new contexts Cognitive Abilities Test™ CogAT measures important reasoning skills:

7. Cognitive Abilities Test™ CogAT measures three different cognitive abilities:

8. Cognitive Abilities Test CogAt and IQ • The CogAT is NOT an IQ test, but is a test of reasoning which is one of the variforms of intelligence • It has a .79 correlation to IQ. The closer to 1.0 the better the correlation, so it has high correlation • Reasoning abilities have substantial correlations with learning and problem solving, both in and out of school

9. Cognitive Abilities Test Verbal Ability – Best predictor of academic success Quantitative Ability – “number sense” ability to see relationship of numbers Nonverbal Ability – Best predictor of how fast a student learns

11. Raw Scores • Number of Items = the number of questions on the subtests. • Number Att. (attempted) = the number of questions the student answered. • Number Correct = the total number of items the student answered correctly.

13. The CogAT allows comparisons of the performance of students with the performance of other students in the nation of the same agewho took the same test.

16. Standard Age Score(SAS)

19. Stanines

22. Understanding Percentile Ranks A common way to evaluate a student’s performance is to compare it with the performances of some group. Juan’s results on a Verbal battery places him 88h from the bottom of his age mates. Top of the class Juan, as an example, is a student in a group of exactly 100 students also 7.9 years old. 88th The 88 is a PERCENTILE RANKbecause it represents a relative standing, i.e., it identifies what percentage of Juan’s age mates scored the same as or lower than him. Because there are 100 students in his group, one can then say that Juan performed as well as or better than 88 percent of his classmates. Bottom of the group

25. The CogAT allows comparisons of the performance of students with the performance of other students in the nation of the same gradewho took the same testat the same time of year.

27. Juan’s results on a Verbal battery places him 88th from the bottom of his age mates and 89th from the bottom of his grade mates Top of the class 89th 88th Bottom of the national group

28. Understanding Local Percentile Ranks Even though Juan scored at the 89th national percentile rank on the Verbal Battery, he will have a different local percentile rank because he is being compared to a different group of students Top of the district Now, Juan is only being compared to about 650 Grade 2 students in GPS. 58th Juan’s performance on the verbal battery equaled or exceeded the performances of 52 percent of Grade 2 students locally. Bottom of the district

29. Standard Age Score(SAS)

32. A bar graph of the student’s scores appears on the score report as a visual representation of the student’s percentile score.

33. Ability Profile System

35. Ability Profile System

38. This report shows the results of testing for your child at one particular time on one particular assessment. It is important to always look for multiple pieces of evidence when using assessment data to make decisions.