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Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT)®
Grades 3 to 8, 9 and 11
The CogAT is a measure of a student’s potential to succeed in school-related tasks. It is NOT a tool for measuring a student’s intelligence or IQ. Rather, it measures the reasoning skills that have developed during a student’s educational career, even though they have not been explicitly taught. These general cognitive skills are not specific to any content area, but are skills that are used in all areas of a student’s academic experiences. The CogAT also measures general “school skills,” such as the ability to listen, follow directions, and focus attention.
The CogAT scores are measured as:
- verbal (verbal classification, sentence completion, and verbal analogies);
- quantitative (quantitative relations, number series, and equation building); and,
- nonverbal (figure classification, figure analogies, and figure analysis).
The standardization of the CogAT was designed to provide national norms based on a sample of the entire U.S. school population. This “norm group” includes representative samples from 6,000 to 9,000 students drawn from public and private schools; from all geographic regions; from rural, suburban, and urban schools; and from schools of all sizes.
Profile Narrative Cognitive Abilities Test
This profile shows two comparisons for a child’s performance. The first box compares a child’s performance to other children of the same age and the second box compares performance to children in the same grade nationwide. Usually the percentile ranks and stanines are similar for age and grade if a child is approximately the right age for his/her grade. If a child is younger or older for his/her grade the age percentiles and stanines will differ from the grade percentiles and stanines. (The term “stanine” is defined below.)
Helpful Definitions
The following terms are related to standardized achievement testing. Some of the terms might be used on reports provided by our testing companies.
National Percentile Rank (NPR)
Percentiles range from 1 to 99 and show a student’s standing within the group of students in the same grade who were tested at the same time of year during the national standardization. This large group of students attended schools that are representative of schools throughout the nation in terms of region, enrollment size, and socioeconomic status. Thus, for example, if a student earned a percentile rank of 72 on the Math Problem Solving Test, it means that the student scored higher than 72 percent of the students in the group with which he/she is being compared. It also means that 28 percent of the group scored higher. Percentiles are different from percent-correct scores. The percent correct score indicates what percent of the items a student got right on a test. It does not involve comparing with the scores of other students.
National Stanine (NS)
Stanines range from 1-9 (one being low, 9 being high). Stanines are course groupings of percentiles and are convenient to use to help students and parents quickly identify areas of strength and weakness.
Grade Equivalent (GE)
A grade equivalent is a number that describes a student’s location on an achievement continuum. The GE is a decimal number that describes performance in terms of grade level and months. For example, if a sixth-grade student obtains a GE of 7.8 on the Vocabulary test, his/her score is like the one a typical student at the end of the eighth month of seventh grade would likely get on that same Vocabulary test. Grade equivalent scores do not represent student instructional levels. A GE of 11.9 in mathematics does not mean a child is ready for trigonometry. The best use of the GE score is to see if your child has achieved a year’s progress in a year’s time. The average yearly growth is 10 months, by definition. High-achieving students may gain more than 10 months in a year, and in some cases, some low-achieving students may gain less than 10 months in a year assessments, and classroom performance.
Benefits
- Your conference and school feels it is important to administer the CogAT to have one view of a child’s ability to be successful in school and to look for dominant learning strengths.
- CogAT results are most commonly used when a teacher has concerns about a student’s classroom performance or lack of progress. A teacher will look at the CogAT score to get a general sense of a student’s abilities and learning styles, which may lead to further analysis.
- Teachers may select from different CogAT levels. However, it must be done with permission from their superintendent. Please note the information below and consult with the Interpretive Guide for School Administrators before making any changes in a student taking the "Average" level. More information can be obtained at the CogAT website.
Items to Remember
- Standardized testing is only one way to measure student ability and achievement—it’s not the only way. Human capabilities are much more diverse and complex than what is measured by standardized achievement tests or school ability tests. As we learn more from the fields of cognitive science and brain research, definitions of human learning are changing.
- Educators consider scores from these tests as one view of a student. Classroom performance and teacher assessments are equally important
- Teachers also recognize that students’ test-taking skills and attitudes during testing sessions affect their results.
- Caution: The results of the
Next Steps
Students undergo ITBS/ITED and CogAT testing in the fall so that teachers and administrators can act promptly on fresh data within the present school year.
Here are some current uses of testing data:
- Teachers look at the strengths and weaknesses of their classes in the areas tested. They are making thoughtful decisions to re-group students and are adjusting their planning and curriculum emphasis to better meet every child’s individual needs.
- Teachers also focus upon students who performed below expectations to develop a plan to help them become more successful in those particular skills.
- Principals review the data and will use it to develop School Improvement Plans to address gaps in performance by grade level or in their school as a whole.
- Other administrators evaluate scores to see the “big picture” of how students as a whole are achieving. They are looking at whether scores have improved at all grade levels compared to past performance and are observing how students perform over time as they move up through the grade levels. As a result, administrators may implement new curriculum and instructional improvements
- The school and conference evaluate the data and recommendations presented by the conference superintendent and principal in an annual progress report and will use results to identify or modify improvement initiatives.
Levels
The table below lists the recommended test levels for low-, average-, and high-ability classes. Some individuals in any group — such as those students expected to score above the 90th percentile — may be candidates for individualized testing with a level different from the level used for the majority of students. Consult the CogAT, Form 6, Interpretive Guide for School Administrators for additional information.
CogAT is constructed with overlapping sets of items throughout the series. The overlap of items from level to level provides the user with a continuous, ascending scale of difficulty, which is the foundation of CogAT's> superior score scale from Kindergarten through grade 12.
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Recommended Test Levels for CogAT, Form 6, Low-, Average-, and High-Ability Classes |
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Grade |
Low |
Average |
High |
|
K |
K |
K |
1 |
|
1 |
K/1 |
1 |
2 |
|
2 |
1/2 |
2 |
A |
|
3 |
2/A |
A/B |
B |
|
4 |
A/B |
B/C |
C |
|
5 |
B/C |
C/D |
D |
|
6 |
C/D |
D/E |
E |
|
7 |
D/E |
E/F |
F |
|
8 |
E/F |
F |
F |
|
9 |
F |
F |
G |
|
10 |
F |
G |
G |
|
11 |
G |
G |
H |
|
12 |
G |
H |
H |
CogAT® Resources:
