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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

It’s wrong to prepare for some tests. Cogat. The old TJ test. 
[/quote]

At the risking of opening up an old can of worms, I've never understood this line of reasoning. Is it better to be unprepared than to be prepared, for anything?

If I'm going to be tested, I want to do as well as I can. Knowing the format of the test and the type of content it addresses seems like an obvious aspect of preparation to undertake. If it's a timed test, then practicing to get a feel for how quickly I need to work also makes sense.

Don't athletes, musicians, actors practice before a tryout? Don't students study before a class exam? Don't job candidates prepare for interviews? [/quote]

This was exactly my point too. Preparation shows determination, dedication, willingness to learn and grow, and shows the kid will be successful.[/quote]

How do the kids know to prepare for the cogat or how to do?

Same for TJ - how are they signing up for these prep programs? 
[/quote]

Now you're just being silly. Kids also don't know how to improve at sports or a musical instrument - that's why there are coaches and teachers. Kids only know to study for a school exam because the tacher tells them to - is that also unethical? Is it cheating if they study for a test rather than passing based on their own merits?

Why go to school at all? After all, the point is to learn and grow and improve, which sounds just as unethical by your reasoning.[/quote]

The only kids who are getting prepped for cogat and the old tj test are kids from parents trying to game the system.

It is an unfair advantage for a public school screening test.

[b]If FCPS sent home prep materials to all kids (like they send home study guides for tests), then it’d be fair but they don’t because these tests aren’t designed to be prepped. [/b]The questions on the tj test are illegally obtained.

You are obviously willing to go to great lengths to rationalize this cheating. So we can go around and around all day. At the end of the day, most FCPS would agree that it’s cheating. You are an outlier. 
[/quote]

DP  Why not do the bolded?  That's exactly what the authors of the CogAT recommended in areas where prepping is prevalent.  
Many kids prep and can't achieve high scores.  Many other kids don't prep and still get high scores, including low income kids.  I'd prefer a system that at least ensures that a kid is even capable of achieving high scores on a test over one that will admit a lot of kids who wouldn't have been capable of high scores even with prep camps.  For TJ, they could simply use PSAT 8/9 as a means to identify capable children, since prep materials are widely available, and many kids can't achieve 98th or 99th percentile scores even with a ton of prep.

I know quite a lot of kids who were admitted to AAP with CogAT scores around 120 *after* the parents prepped the kids.  Prepping is not as foolproof as people seem to think.  [/quote]

I guess that levels the playing ground but fundamentally you should prepare for a cognitive assessment.

Has FCPS sent home materials to prepare for the CogAT? We’ve never seen anything. 
[/quote]

They haven't, but it is the best solution when some portion of the kids are prepping and another group isn't.  If everyone did at least some reasonable amount of prep, the scores and national percentile ranks would be invalid, but the local percentile ranks would be very useful for things like AAP or TJ.

People seem to think that tests are the parts of the application most skewed by privilege.  I would argue the exact opposite.  People of means hire tutors, so their kids are much more likely to have grades that are inflated.  They're more likely to pester the teachers or administration to get their kids' grades bumped up.  They're more likely to hire coaches to help them with the essay writing.  They're more likely to cheat when the essays are unproctored.

Even with tutoring and prep camps, there's a limit to how much you can boost your scores.  If scores were that easily boosted, almost every affluent kid would have a 1500+ SAT.  If the middle of the road and lower SES schools provided prep materials and test prep coaching, then the exams would be the most predictive measure of whether a kid is quite bright and belongs at a place like TJ or AAP.[/quote]

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