<p>My youngest is headed back to public school. She needed to take the GATE test. I did not have high expectations for her results. She is bright and a fairly strong but not highly motivated student.
Her Verbal score was in the 94 percentile, Non verbal 80. Both seem reasonable for her. But her Quantitative score was 35. There was some discussion of LD's back in K-1 but she eventually learned to read and has done fairly well in school. She does struggle some in Math.
Is such a huge range Normal?</p>
<p>Not really. I would consider more testing to find out of there are processing issues. Experience is that having to write things down to do the math can bring out transferring/clerical processing issues you were not aware of. Finding out if there can help with learning how to accommodate and work around them.</p>
<p>don't remember how to interpret tests- but off the top of my head- you could look into evaluation of non verbal learning disability</p>
<p>Even if she is doing well now, there may be processing issues that make her brain take the long way around to approach a problem, and as the work gets more difficult, it may get to the point where what ever work arounds she has developed, don't work anymore.</p>
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<p>The CogAT is such a limited test, the low score might just be due to momentary distraction. However it does seem like a heads up that more testing might be warranted - especially if she's had any problems in school. My younger son has some processing issues, they showed up on both the CogAT and the WISC, but looked much worse on CogAT. They've caused some issues over the years, but given that he refuses to get school accomodations it's more a question of getting B's where he might have gotten A's with more time.</p>
<p>mom60, echoing what others have said, I would consider a fuller neuropsychological battery of tests so that you can understand what is going on. </p>
<p>We have two kids with significant deviations between the ups and downs and accommodations have helped both tremendously. Neuropsychological testing was the first step in figuring out what to do. The first kid was obviously incredibly smart and really dyslexic so the issues were painfully obvious, but specifically what to do has taken a while to work out. For the second kid, it was harder to see, but her Verbal Comprehension Index is about 3 standard deviations above the mean but the processing speed is almost 1 standard deviation below the mean. These big gaps cause performance problems if they are not addressed. Short term memory is also below the mean. And, with extra time and a few changes in how she studies and some herbal supplements, her performance (which was good enough to get her into a prestigious private high school) appears to be improving and getting less variable and is limited more by her willingness to accept a 93 or 95 in a tough-grading school as OK (while my son thought he should get 105 out of 100 and frequently did).</p>
<p>It is unusual to have a gap but the gap may not be as huge as it appears. In other words, a 35% score may not be far off from average since most of the population is clustered around average. So usually professionals look at stanines and discrepancies in ability/ achievement more than percentages.</p>
<p>I would think your child has a weakness-- but it may or may not rise to a level where the school would put a name on it and give her help. You would have to get a full neuropsychological battery from a professional for that. If, for example, the quantitative score was on a subtest (as I believe it is on the WISC-IV, and an optional one at that), that lone weaker score might not get him/ her extra help but you can try. By the way, if I remember correctly, I once read the reason they made that score optional is that it correlated very much with how much math the student had had in school. In other words, the weakness in school might just also be translating to a weakness in the subtest, depending on the test. So, as others have said, it might not even be a weakness with numbers but some other weakness (visual memory, processing, coding) that is reflected in that score. There's no way to know unless a professional tests for all those things which is what they do in a full battery.</p>
<p>The trouble with math may be due to a visual processing problem. It is unusual with such a high verbal performance, but occurs. Get thorough testing. More LD kids have verbal processing difficulties rather than visual so the visual can sometimes be overlooked, especially in high IQ students. My kids have visual processing problems and the only way it showed in high school was in their math scores. One has accommodations in college and one does not, but the key for them has been changing their study and classroom habits to overcome the slow visual processing, which basically involves translating visual information (such as power point presentations, equations, etc.) into verbal information so they can retrieve it later. Choosing the right psychologist is helpful. I would suggest you call the local university's disabled student's office and ask them for referrals. They often have referrals to people involved in academia (i.e. up on the latest research/testing methods) who are used to working with older kids. When I did this, my son's testing was far more thorough and the advice more instructive than he had received in the past.</p>
<p>Was the math section last when the exam was administered? I've heard of kids getting score spreads like that when they got tired or otherwise didn't want to be in that exam room any longer and quit trying - just marked the last section or two more or less randomly.</p>
<p>When she left the test she said the reading sections were easy and she finished with time to spare. The nonverbal she did not have quite enough time. She said the proctor on most sections gave them a 5 minute warning. For the nonverbal when she got to that point she just randomly guessed the rest of the questions. She felt the math sections were difficult and she said in both sections she did not come close to even completing them. She said in one of the sections the proctor did not give them the five minute warning and she did not have time to randomly mark the rest of the test. I don't know what order the test was given. I don't think lack of focus was the cause.</p>
<p>Usually, over the testing runs 10 to 12 hours over several appointments and I think the psychologists take the fatigue factor into consideration when deciding which tests to administer when. The reason the OP's daughter ran out of time on only one type of testing likely has an explanation other than test fatigue.</p>
<p>The cognatives abilities test is a quick and dirty test that lasts only an hour. It's very easy to bomb a section. My younger son wasn't gifted according to the CogAT, but was easily over the bar on the WISC which is a much longer test given over several days.</p>
<p>Ditto on what mathmom said. (And BOY did I enjoy telling a certain teacher that my son got into the Johns Hopkins summer program after she insisted he couldn't possibly be gifted because his COGAT scores didn't reflect it!!) </p>
<p>OTOH, I believe the rule is that if there's more than 2 standard deviations between one score and another on the COGAT, it's usually indicative of a learning disability.</p>
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Is such a huge range Normal?
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<p>It wouldn't be commonplace, but I have seen bigger gaps. The biggest gap in percentile scores I've seen for a test-taker I know is math at 99.9th percentile (that's how it was reported) and reading at 1st percentile. I rather suspect that in that case the test-taker's reading ability was underestimated, but in any event there are test-takers who show big gaps between subscores. </p>
<p>In the case I know about, the test-taker became better at reading, and now reliably gets 99th percentile scores on various reading tests, while still scoring high on math tests. Math is often very lousily taught </p>
<p>and is often very lousily tested, so the first thing for you to do might be to get a reality check on just how well your child does math. Maybe some better instruction </p>
<p>Singapore</a> Math </p>
<p>can improve those math scores.</p>
<p>One area of weakness that can lead to lower math scores is working memory. Long term and short term memory may be in the normal range, but working memory involves the ability to hold information in storage and manipulate it. As you can imagine, a weakness here could greatly affect math. Other areas affected by deficits in working memory are the ability to draw inferences in reading comprehension.</p>
<p>cartera45- she has some issues with memory. When she was younger we noticed she could not memorize lyrics of music. For example for the winter sings.
In 8th grade she took a geography class that had weekly map tests. She failed every single map exam. As much as she studied she could not recalled the names of the countries. This year she is taking World history. She is doing really well. Today is a map test of the Middle East. It will be interesting to see how she does.
She is upset about the test. She orginally did not feel a strong urge to get into Gate. She is now feeling like she is stupid and disapointed she did not at least test into GATE English. (You need at least a 95%).
I am not sure what we will do. I have a concern about the "college prep" program at the public high schools. It is filled with many kids who just don't care. I know she could do the work in the GATE english and social studies courses. I am going to have to see what I can do with the school. We could have her privately tested. Her brother had testing done privately and it is expensive. I don't know what the testing will gain other then putting a label on it. She does well in school in most classes. Math was a struggle till this fall when she worked with a tutor for a short while.(she is still weak with math facts) She is in 9th grade and still in Algebra. She would like to take Geometry in summer school to "catch up" with some of her peers. She also can not seem to get Spanish.</p>
<p>If you can possibly afford the private testing I would do it, especially if she's receptive to the idea. My son was tested at the beginning of sophomore year, and it was a revelation to him. He was diagnosed with a visual processing deficit, and suddenly all the anomalies made sense. Most important was his sense of self-discovery. He had been beating himself up for something that he couldn't control. Rather than feeling stupid or inferior he became empowered. When SAT/ACT time came around we were able to come up with a prep strategy that helped him get a "good enough" score without relying on accommodations (which the College Board refused to give him).</p>
<p>The upside to memory being the problem is that there are lots of ways to compensate - she just needs to be aware of them. I taught learning disabled kids years ago and spent lots of time coming up with mnemonic and other memory aides. Note taking also becomes key so help with that and general organizational skills take on even more significance. Continuing in music will help - music reinforces memory and math. I know that private testing is expensive - it was over $1000 in this area 10 years ago. Math facts are particularly tough with a working memory deficit because some kids need to learn twice as many. For example, kids with memory issues have to learn 6x4 and 4x6 independently of each other. Languages can be challenging for the same reasons and gets harder as it moves away from simple vocabulary to more advanced translation.</p>