Anonymous wrote: You can't tell me that CogAt scores are only valid with children who have never seen a logic puzzle or a vocab question before.

No one is saying that. People are saying that the scores are only valid for kids who haven't seen the exact same format of questions used in the test. If the test is using questions with a format that is already generally used by kids doing simple logic puzzles or vocab exercises, then it's a fundamentally flawed ability/aptitude test. Children who are highly enriched still have valid scores. Children who have been prepped with the exact same format of question do not. Children who are highly enriched are likely to have high scores on the CogAT, WISC, and any other test administered to those children. Children who specifically prep the CogAT will only have high scores on the CogAT.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"Good night's rest and breakfast" is traditional advice for ALL tests. When did that become code for "Fairfax county says no prepping"? Who are they afraid of offending? If they really man "don't prep", I'm sure they will say just that. You guys are killing me..

It's not a fairfax county thing at all. Ability tests have been normed with kids who did not prep and have never seen the questions, other than the sample questions from the test manufacturer. Prepping for the test makes the result invalid. If your kid preps for the CogAT and scores at the 98th percentile, your child is not truly at the 98th percentile. If that same child's scores had been normed against a sample of kids who did prep, the percentile rank would be much lower. The creator of the CogAT pretty much states that prepping makes the scores invalid. http://faculty.education.uiowa.edu/docs/default-source/dlohman/thoughts-on-policies-to-mitigate-effects-of-practice-tests-and-coaching.pdf?sfvrsn=2

That being said, a "no prepping" policy is completely unenforceable. So, FCPS should just urge everyone to prep, recommend some prep workbooks, and hope that the artificial score inflation will be more or less equal for all students so they can correctly identify the true top 15-20%.

That's pretty much impossible to enforce in a middle-class home where parents pay attention to the children's development. I've been playing vocabulary games with my son since he was four, so that's your sentence completion right there. He attends the Russian School of Math, and all they do there is work on pattern recognition and math practice. So there you go, without ever cracking open the practice test, he's already done hundreds of very similar questions. You can't tell me that CogAt scores are only valid with children who have never seen a logic puzzle or a vocab question before.

Or.. just not put so much weight on this test (since a significant sample of the population taking it prepped at home).

I'm hoping FCPS have already realized this and they are not weighing it heavily (just like a strong college does not weigh the SAT heavily because they know people prep a lot for it and they can easily raise/maximize their score by doing so).

Having said that, it is a good data point to have this test when applying so that they know kids can handle the program and benchmark to some degree. Again just like the SAT, a low score should raise a red flag that they have to check the other components, (specifically the teacher recs and classroom work) very carefully to make sure the child can handle it. I think they must/should require at least 1 high test score (so if kid had a bad day, they can take some other type of test to show that it was a one off).