Reply to Is CogAT gone forever?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]More seats, for sure.  There are plenty who would benefit from enrichment -- it shouldn't be the top x%, where x is a fairly small number that fits an artificially-low number of seats made available.  They thumb their noses at state requirements by having the separate SIPPI process, but tying that to much more watered-down options for within-standard-curricula (but poorly and inconsistently used) enrichments, as opposed to more holistic enrichment programs (e.g., CES & criteria-based magnets).

CogAT can be gamed, but much less so than MAP, which, for any kid with moderately high ability, is so much more about exposure (outside tutoring, anyone?) than innate capacity to learn/need to stretch beyond the standard curriculum.  If anything, they've set up a less equitable system by using MAP, abandoning better paradigms that have been put forth with sounder reasoning, and have used the CovID excuse for it well beyond the one year (or maybe two) that it might have made sense.

Someone remarked about gatekeeping.  I think that's a word thrown around inappropriately, and perhaps intentionally, simply making it difficult to put any identification paradigm in play, as identification, required by state law (along with programs to meet identified need), becomes a gate, itself.

There shouldn't be anything wrong with the concept of identification of learning ability, nor should there be anything wrong with the idea of providing commensurate programs.  We certainly do the latter for those with great difficulties, though it seems that MCPS resists the former in some cases (I'm guessing from a combination of high cost and overzealous gaming of that system, too).  The difference seems to be a combination of specificity within the statutes and a poor presumption that we don't need to worry about the needs of high flyers the way we would about others.

Implementations that allow significant gaming, inflexible/poorly targeted schemas, poor matches of available program seats (or alternate high-quality enrichments) to identified needs, etc. -- this is where the problem lies.

There's probably something out there less gameable than CogAT.  Let's find it.  In the meantime, let's use the known of CogAT to do something far better than the largely MAP-based system they have in place at the moment.[/quote]

Who are you and how do we get you on the BOE? You'd have my vote.

And there are TONS of parents who game the MAP test system by buying MAP test prep materials online too. MCPS has to do better. [/quote]

Well said![/quote]

Their pro-gatekeeping propaganda isn't all that great.[/quote]

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