5th Grade CogAT : Number Correct

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is cracking me up--it's so much like College Confidential around the time college decisions are released, down to checking UPS notifications to see what kind of package will be arriving.

Here are my kid's stats:

Cogat raw scores V55, Q47, NV 39 (the lowest I've seen on here), which translates to MCPS V97%, Q93%, NV79%, and national 99%, 99%, and 93% for a 99% composite (VQN).
Fall Map-M 249, Map-R 238.
5s on PARCC
All As

Recommended for both Eastern and TPMS.

White boy, high SES (Whitman feeder) ES, not CES. No prepping. Didn't realize he took the Cogat, and, in fact, never heard of it before we got the letter in the mail yesterday. Had not considered the possibility of magnets, so this is all a surprise.

You know what's funny? A lot of us will likely be at one open house or the other. Should we have a secret DCUM sign, or would you prefer to pretend you've never even heard of this site?

There are so many layers of the admissions process (local norming, peer group, etc.) that I think everyone forgets that MCPS consciously has been trying to make sure there's representation from each ES. In practice that means usually at least the 2 top scorers at a school will get in no matter how they compare with others in their SES band or peer cohort. The elementary schools where few people go to the CES are the most competitive. The elementary schools where many of the top kids go to the CES may be easier some years. I know at our CES there are some elementary schools that only sent 2-3 kids but others that sent 10 kids!

I'm not so sure about representation from each ES. My child said they had the counselor's 'talk about magnets', and the counselor said that, in the past, 5 kids from our school got into a magnet, and last year nobody did. She was trying to make a point how competitive and unpredictable the admissions process is, but I do believe that, some years, the selection committee might completely pass a school up if it's within a certain SES level and no one really stands out there. I'm sure this scenario isn't statistically impossible.

What school or cluster? I'm pretty sure MCPS bragged it had had representation from every middle school.

WJ cluster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, for whatever reason they used the age normed, not the grade normed, which disadvantaged somewhat the kids with fall birthdays (and the red-shirted kids), and advantaged the younger kids in the grade. Since it's an achievement test and not an IQ test, I think it was wildly inappropriate to use the age norms and not the grade norms, as you would not normally think a 5th grader should be compared to a 6th grader in achievement (unless you were prepping that kid outside of school).
I don't care that much, as I didn't want my kid to go to one of those schools, but I just think it's an example of MCPS being sort of irrational about much of this.

I suspect the "disadvantage" for fall birthdays was far less than for red-shirted kids, and that's fine. If you redshirt an early summer birthday, that 5th grader is 11.5 by November when the test is administered and could easily be more than a full year older than the youngest kid in the class. I hope that younger kid gets a slight advantage, and I say that as someone whose kids' birthdays fall right smack in the middle of spring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, for whatever reason they used the age normed, not the grade normed, which disadvantaged somewhat the kids with fall birthdays (and the red-shirted kids), and advantaged the younger kids in the grade. Since it's an achievement test and not an IQ test, I think it was wildly inappropriate to use the age norms and not the grade norms, as you would not normally think a 5th grader should be compared to a 6th grader in achievement (unless you were prepping that kid outside of school).
I don't care that much, as I didn't want my kid to go to one of those schools, but I just think it's an example of MCPS being sort of irrational about much of this.

You seem to have a very profound opinion for someone that doesn't care that much. And especially for someone who doesn't even want their kid to go to one of those schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, plenty of kids are still getting in.
DD is at a different CES (different total number of students) and at least 6 kids were admitted so far. She's heard there are more but letters just came out in our area.

I do think that because of their goal of having every ES in the mix they are taking lower scoring kids if they are the top lower scoring kids at their school.

Interesting- maybe they changed things from previous years because last year very few students seemed to initially get in from CES if they didn’t qualify for local preference. Maybe they decided to group CES students with kids in their home school, which would make a lot more sense...

[Anonymous]

I don’t get the complaint about redshirted kids being “disadvantaged.” There is a deep irony there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, for whatever reason they used the age normed, not the grade normed, which disadvantaged somewhat the kids with fall birthdays (and the red-shirted kids), and advantaged the younger kids in the grade. Since it's an achievement test and not an IQ test, I think it was wildly inappropriate to use the age norms and not the grade norms, as you would not normally think a 5th grader should be compared to a 6th grader in achievement (unless you were prepping that kid outside of school).
I don't care that much, as I didn't want my kid to go to one of those schools, but I just think it's an example of MCPS being sort of irrational about much of this.

You seem to have a very profound opinion for someone that doesn't care that much. And especially for someone who doesn't even want their kid to go to one of those schools.

I find this red-shirted comment strange too. It's not a linear correlation anyway. If you look into their documentation you'll see sometimes you need to score higher in some of the younger age categories than older ones! So maybe you needed a 53 to score 99th percentile on verbal for a July 2009 birthday versus 49 for October 2008 birthdays.

Also, this isn't an achievement test like PARCC or MAP. This is a learned ability test so while they say it's not an IQ test it's closer to one than a straight up achievement test. It's not meant to show depth and breadth of knowledge in math and reading. It's meant to highlight reasoning abilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, plenty of kids are still getting in.
DD is at a different CES (different total number of students) and at least 6 kids were admitted so far. She's heard there are more but letters just came out in our area.

I do think that because of their goal of having every ES in the mix they are taking lower scoring kids if they are the top lower scoring kids at their school.

Interesting- maybe they changed things from previous years because last year very few students seemed to initially get in from CES if they didn’t qualify for local preference. Maybe they decided to group CES students with kids in their home school, which would make a lot more sense...

I don't think that's it.
Remember this group is THE FIRST group that went through universal screening at some of the centers. (I think some were in a pilot for universal screening the year before but this is the first year where everyone went through it.) It stands to reason that there was a mismatch between last year's 5th graders who got in through the opt-in application process and the new universal screening of the MS magnet program.

But this year the kids in the CESes already went through universal screening to get to where they are. The MS magnets use a similar process as the ES process so it stands to reason that more of them will get in. I know MCPS is still trying to balance for gender, school, ESOL, FARMS so you'll still see fewer admits from the CES than two years ago when the MS process was opt-in but it should be not as bad as it was last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t get the complaint about redshirted kids being “disadvantaged.” There is a deep irony there.

Guess we can blame MCPS if they don't correct for parents who sent their kid to school a year late.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, for whatever reason they used the age normed, not the grade normed, which disadvantaged somewhat the kids with fall birthdays (and the red-shirted kids), and advantaged the younger kids in the grade. Since it's an achievement test and not an IQ test, I think it was wildly inappropriate to use the age norms and not the grade norms, as you would not normally think a 5th grader should be compared to a 6th grader in achievement (unless you were prepping that kid outside of school).
I don't care that much, as I didn't want my kid to go to one of those schools, but I just think it's an example of MCPS being sort of irrational about much of this.

You seem to have a very profound opinion for someone that doesn't care that much. And especially for someone who doesn't even want their kid to go to one of those schools.

I’m interested in it as an exercise in applied mathematics and education policy. My kid is at a CES but I wanted kid closer to home for middle school years. And my point wasn’t that it was unfair to red-shirted kids, but rather potentially unfair to kids with September/October birthdays (who were following the rules to start K when they were almost 6). I’d be interested to see the data to see how it really skews...I do wonder how the age norming worked for those kids whose parents sent them early (starting K at 4) as it does not seem like the dataset would be large enough for them. I also wonder about the wisdom of giving parents an incentive to start their kids early...but maybe this is not a big enough incentive for that.

[Anonymous]

It’s really interesting seeing parents rob children of their childhood to get into these silly school programs which will have minimal impact on the landscape of their future. It’s literally the difference between a inner or outer cubicle in the middle management farm house on the 7th floor.
By the time these kids get through high school they are burned out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, for whatever reason they used the age normed, not the grade normed, which disadvantaged somewhat the kids with fall birthdays (and the red-shirted kids), and advantaged the younger kids in the grade. Since it's an achievement test and not an IQ test, I think it was wildly inappropriate to use the age norms and not the grade norms, as you would not normally think a 5th grader should be compared to a 6th grader in achievement (unless you were prepping that kid outside of school).
I don't care that much, as I didn't want my kid to go to one of those schools, but I just think it's an example of MCPS being sort of irrational about much of this.

You seem to have a very profound opinion for someone that doesn't care that much. And especially for someone who doesn't even want their kid to go to one of those schools.

I’m interested in it as an exercise in applied mathematics and education policy. My kid is at a CES but I wanted kid closer to home for middle school years. And my point wasn’t that it was unfair to red-shirted kids, but rather potentially unfair to kids with September/October birthdays (who were following the rules to start K when they were almost 6). I’d be interested to see the data to see how it really skews...I do wonder how the age norming worked for those kids whose parents sent them early (starting K at 4) as it does not seem like the dataset would be large enough for them. I also wonder about the wisdom of giving parents an incentive to start their kids early...but maybe this is not a big enough incentive for that.

It doesn’t matter how big the data set of people who sent their kid to K early in MCPS is. It’s the national SAS for the kid’s birth month that is used to calculate the MCPS score. So that national SAS will include all kids nationally in the same birth month as your kid regardless of their grade at the time of the test (and they won’t all be taking it in November so where they are by grade will vary). MCPS then plots that SAS to work out local percentiles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, plenty of kids are still getting in.
DD is at a different CES (different total number of students) and at least 6 kids were admitted so far. She's heard there are more but letters just came out in our area.

I do think that because of their goal of having every ES in the mix they are taking lower scoring kids if they are the top lower scoring kids at their school.

Interesting- maybe they changed things from previous years because last year very few students seemed to initially get in from CES if they didn’t qualify for local preference. Maybe they decided to group CES students with kids in their home school, which would make a lot more sense...

I don't think that's it.
Remember this group is THE FIRST group that went through universal screening at some of the centers. (I think some were in a pilot for universal screening the year before but this is the first year where everyone went through it.) It stands to reason that there was a mismatch between last year's 5th graders who got in through the opt-in application process and the new universal screening of the MS magnet program.

But this year the kids in the CESes already went through universal screening to get to where they are. The MS magnets use a similar process as the ES process so it stands to reason that more of them will get in. I know MCPS is still trying to balance for gender, school, ESOL, FARMS so you'll still see fewer admits from the CES than two years ago when the MS process was opt-in but it should be not as bad as it was last year.

My kid was in that pilot for universal screening and is currently a 6th grader. Last year, ~25% of the students in that class of universally-screened CES kids got middle school magnet invitations. It seemed higher than the other CES schools reported here, so your theory about the CES universal screening being more in line with the middle school universal screening might be true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s really interesting seeing parents rob children of their childhood to get into these silly school programs which will have minimal impact on the landscape of their future. It’s literally the difference between a inner or outer cubicle in the middle management farm house on the 7th floor.
By the time these kids get through high school they are burned out.

Meh. Not every magnet kid is under tons of pressure at home or Type A. Also, many magnet kids don’t have long bus rides - some can even walk!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, for whatever reason they used the age normed, not the grade normed, which disadvantaged somewhat the kids with fall birthdays (and the red-shirted kids), and advantaged the younger kids in the grade. Since it's an achievement test and not an IQ test, I think it was wildly inappropriate to use the age norms and not the grade norms, as you would not normally think a 5th grader should be compared to a 6th grader in achievement (unless you were prepping that kid outside of school).
I don't care that much, as I didn't want my kid to go to one of those schools, but I just think it's an example of MCPS being sort of irrational about much of this.

You seem to have a very profound opinion for someone that doesn't care that much. And especially for someone who doesn't even want their kid to go to one of those schools.

I’m interested in it as an exercise in applied mathematics and education policy. My kid is at a CES but I wanted kid closer to home for middle school years. And my point wasn’t that it was unfair to red-shirted kids, but rather potentially unfair to kids with September/October birthdays (who were following the rules to start K when they were almost 6). I’d be interested to see the data to see how it really skews...I do wonder how the age norming worked for those kids whose parents sent them early (starting K at 4) as it does not seem like the dataset would be large enough for them. I also wonder about the wisdom of giving parents an incentive to start their kids early...but maybe this is not a big enough incentive for that.

Age norming makes the most sense and is fair. Your 5th grader is compared with other 5th graders with the same birth month. They aren't being compared to 6th graders since they don't take the 5th grade CogAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s really interesting seeing parents rob children of their childhood to get into these silly school programs which will have minimal impact on the landscape of their future. It’s literally the difference between a inner or outer cubicle in the middle management farm house on the 7th floor.
By the time these kids get through high school they are burned out.

So sour grape. As an ordinary man with such a narrow view of the world, you'll never understand what self-motivation and self-constraints mean.