prepping for cogat test .. is it cheating?
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Anonymous
OP, I’m willing to bet you don’t care if it’s cheating and are willing to do it regardless just to get an advantage |
Anonymous
Is that he best argument the prepping-is-cheating folks have: you know it when you see it?! If you're going to call us cheaters, at least provide an argument. Our students study for curricular tests in math, science, English, history, etc.We rehearse before delivering a speech. Athletes warm up before a game, practice extensively, and receive coaching. Similar for musicians. Are those sorts of prepping also forms of cheating? As others have noted, FCPS teachers themselves help students to prep for these tests. Why i that particular amount of prep OK but any additional prep a form of cheating? And what doesn't FCP mention this prepping-is-cheating policy on their webpage? https://www.fcps.edu/node/39761 |
Anonymous
Well, of course it will - that's the whole point. And that doesn't entail that it is cheating. Studying for any test, practicing a sport or music instrument, gaining experience at anything - these all help us perform better than we otherwise would have. So, for that matter, does learning to read: if my parents and teachers hadn't taught me how to read, I would otherwise have never read a book. Why this absurd fetishization of the "natural" unprepped state? |
Anonymous
The actual answer is that aptitude tests are not assessment tests and are designed to be taken cold, with no preparation beyond the 2-3 practice questions they give right before the test. And practice, such as a workbook with lots of examples of types of questions and answers and how to answer them, significantly change (improve) the score and invalidate the results. The school won't penalize a 1st or 2nd grader, they won't shame them or call them out. You don't have to worry about that. They just don't put much weight into higher test scores anymore. |
Anonymous
| Ideally, these tests should be taken cold. But in reality, if you can’t stop others from prepping, you can buy a $20 book and let your kids practice too. Minimum investment and it will help your kids gain the same “marginal amount of improvement “, at least psychologically it ‘ll make the parents believe so. The ground will be leveled. For the same reason, many schools make their students practice COGAT and NNAT in the classroom now. Can this be considered organized group cheating? |
Anonymous
But since almost nobody does that these days because they want an edge over everyone else and often spend thousands of dollars on prep classes to get an even greater edge that really doesn't matter these days. |
Anonymous
| Many of the posts here mislead others into believing prep doesn't matter when in fact these same posters undoubtedly prep their own children and want to discourage others from doing it because they see this as a zero-sum game. |
Anonymous
| I prepped both my children. Both are in AAP. Interestingly enough, the oldest didn't do well on either test regardless but got in due to excellent GBRS and his ESL status. The younger one had excellent test scores PLUS a great GBRS and got in too. |
Anonymous
The kid has to have intelligence and a brain to do prepping and get an advantage. You cannot turn a pig's ear into a silk purse. If it was so easy to ace tests by prepping why would there be an achievement gap? |
Anonymous
There's no such thing.. This topic keeps popping up at least once a year. Prep all you want for any test you want. The concept of "not allowed", was invented by some clever lawyer White mom (now stay at home) to dissuade the Asians from prepping. White moms don't want their precious offspring to take time off from ballet, soccer or other such trivial pursuits to prep and compete against the Asians and Nigerians, hence the misinformation campaign. It's like 'Donald Trump won the 2020 election'. |
Anonymous
haha, i love this! it's so true! |
Anonymous
+1 (except that the word is fazed). The school will tell you not to prep. That means don't prep. But many do and nobody cares if you do. You sound like you want to, so go for it. Both my kids are really smart so I never felt the need to prep. We just trusted the process. Both scored in the 140s with no prep at all. |
Anonymous
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If you priortize education, make decent amount of money, have a functional family, and actually like your kids - prep and educate them.
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Anonymous
Any exam test that tests knowledge you should have accrued through education- SAT/SOL/etc prep and studying are expected and encouraged, whereas a test that determines aptitude, like the Cogat, is not supposed to be prepped for. Do a thought exercise: if you there was a way you could prepare in advance for an IQ test, learning what to expect and tips or tricks to improve your score - is it really reflecting your ability? Personally, I don't care if you prep or not as long as your kid can handle an AAP program on their own without external pressure from you as a parent. |
Anonymous
Clearly doing nothing Even something as simple as reviewing the format of a few sample questions with your kid and then having them maybe take a practice test (or even just a few questions on their own) to get used to the idea of the format and how to fill in a scan sheet and so on is often called "prepping" on this forum. To distinguish though, I'll call this "lite prepping". This is pretty lightweight stuff and if a kid is feeling pressure from this then that would seem to suggest some other issue that is going on (that isn't the result of the prepping itself). Of course, there's also the kind of prepping that's sustained over a period of time where kids are taking classes or doing repeated workbooks at home and actively engaged in trying to raise their score, etc. which I'll distinguish as "intensive prepping". Now some kids just love these kinds of problem-solving workbooks anyway and would have no problem doing these on the regular, the same kids who enjoy doing brain teaser workbooks as an occasional diversion while travelling, etc. Those kids wouldn't be put under "this kind of pressure" either, even with intensive prepping... they just see it as more fun problems and brain games to work on and get better at. And of course yes, there are some kids where this type of intensive prepping feels onerous, where they're doing it only to satisfy their parents, where it's a struggle, and most likely where the parents ARE putting some pressure on the kids by telling them they need to score high (and why) and are investing a ton into achieving a certain result (namely, raising the score high enough to get them into AAP). And yeah, I'd say that can cross the line into toxic. One problem is you're bucketing ALL these different types of scenarios into a single bucket of 'prepping', and when you oversimplify in that way you really can't draw any meaningful conclusions or generalizations about it. Another problem is that because some parents won't be aware of or invest anything even into 'lite prepping' (let alone being resourced for intensive prepping if their kids enjoy it), then their kids will be at a relative disadvantage on the scores (even if it's just a few points), and that's going to be disproportionately lower-SES families. But the solution typically being proposed is "well, therefore to make it fair we should all agree on the lowest common denominator of doing absolutely nothing to support our kids in being prepared to take an abilities test", which most folks recognize as ridiculously problematic on the face of it. I'd also argue that forcing kids to take CoGAT with absolute-zero information about what the format will be or having viewed a question but knowing that it may determine if they get into AAP (kids talk) is way more pressure and stress for them than doing a bit of lite prepping beforehand so that they have some ballpark idea of what to expect. |