Transcript Document

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)
CogAT: Cognitive Abilities Test
What is it?
What information does it give us?
How can we use this information?
Cognitive Abilities Test
™
CogAT measures important reasoning skills:
• Comprehending
problem situations
• Detecting similarities
and differences
• Making inferences
• Making deductions
• Classifying and categorizing
objects, events, and
other stimuli
• Creating and adapting problemsolving strategies
• Using familiar concepts and
skills in new contexts
Cognitive Abilities Test
™
CogAT measures three different cognitive abilities:
Verbal Battery
Quantitative Battery
NonVerbal Battery
Measures flexibility,
fluency, and
adaptability in
reasoning with verbal
materials and in
solving verbal
problems
Measures flexibility
and fluency in working
with quantitative
symbols and concepts
and the student’s
ability to discover
relationships and to
figure out a rule or
principle that explains
them
Measures fluency and
flexibility in reasoning
with shapes and visual
patterns. Facilitates
the assessment of
English learners or
students whose verbal
or mathematical
experiences are
limited.
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
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
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.
The CogAT allows comparisons of the performance of
students with the performance of other students in the
nation of the same age who took the same test.
Standard Age Score
(SAS)
Cognitive Level
SAS Range
Very High
128-150+
Above Average
112-127
Average
89-111
Below Average
73-88
Very Low
50-72
Stanines
Description
Very High
Stanine Range
9
Above Average
7-8
Average
4-6
Below Average
2-3
Very Low
1
Understanding Percentile Ranks
A common way to evaluate a student’s performance is to
compare it with the performances of some group.
Top of the class
Juan, as an example, is a
student in a group of
exactly 100 students also
7.9 years old.
88th
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
Juan’s results on a Verbal
battery places him 88h
from the bottom of his age
mates.
The 88 is a PERCENTILE
RANK because it
represents a relative
standing, i.e., it identifies
what percentage of Juan’s
age mates scored the same
as or lower than him.
The CogAT allows comparisons of the performance of
students with the performance of other students in the
nation of the same grade who took the same test at the
same time of year.
Top of the class
88th
89th
Bottom of the national group
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
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
Standard Age Score
(SAS)
National
Greenwich
SAS Range
SAS Range
Very High
128-150+
139-150+
Above Average
112-127
129-138
Average
89-111
110-128
Below Average
73-88
95-109
Very Low
50-72
73-94
Cognitive Level
Cognitive Abilities Test
Distribution of Standard Age Scores
National
Greenwich
70
80
90
100
110
120
130
140
A bar graph of the student’s scores
appears on the score report as a visual
representation of the student’s percentile
score.
Ability Profile System
Ability Profile System
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.