Interpreting CogAt Test Results is the Key to Harnessing Young Talent

By | December 10, 2014

Educational research ascertains that a child is at the peak of his receptivity, growth and development during his tenure in school. The biggest challenge to the educators while formulating instructional content is the fact that they have to appreciate the individual and unique differences of each and every member in the classroom while simultaneously accomplishing standardization for helping them to contribute towards a common universal goal. This cannot be achieved without a comprehensive assessment of the cognitive abilities of the child which provides an elaborate picture about his mental orientation related to his subjective, verbal and qualitative attributes. In order to derive these insights it is imperative to understand how to assess CogAt results. It is a perceptive document providing extensive information about the child’s educational needs and requirements which need to be adapted in to the daily teaching learning practices of an institution.

A cogent and versatile curriculum will be able to serve the needs of the entire gamut of students from achievers to average and poor performers and drive them towards capitalizing their innate talents as well as work on their weaknesses as well to emerge as balanced members of society. Modern educationists realize that it is not about feeding and staffing indiscriminate knowledge in the young minds and testing their memory during exams. Instead they are putting more emphasis on the proper assimilation, coordination and execution of this information and knowledge through effective teaching delivery and adapting relevant learning techniques as per the intellectual and emotional bearing of the children. The CogAT tests are designed to elicit the elemental and intuitive responses of the children on a comparative scale in order to determine the ideal composition of instructional content in alignment with the diversity of talent and interest amongst students. Thus, it is also phenomenally important to know how to assess CogAt results which is unique and narrative report format providing all-encompassing information about the child’s numeric, linguistic, visual and emotional constitution of the child.

In order to understand how to assess CogAT results one needs to be familiar with certain concepts and jargons which are inextricably associated with this particular model of aptitude test. First and foremost the test structure is equitably distributed between three subset questionnaire batteries comprising verbal, quantitative and non-verbal elements which are series of objective type questions illustrated with pictures. They usually focus on series completion, analogies and classifications and the scoring pattern is also approached from two three angles. Stanines are comparative scores bestowed on a one to nine scale. Percentile Rank (PR) measures how many students and particular candidate has outperformed on a scale of hundred. Over and above these parameters the students are also given particular profiles which also give intricate analysis about their performance in the exam result.