All second-grade students in South Carolina participate in the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) and Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) assessments during the month of October. Your child is scheduled to test between October 12th-October 27th. This letter is designed to provide you with some specific information regarding these tests.

What is the purpose of the assessments?

The primary purpose of these assessments is to identify potential students for academically gifted and talented programs. The results of these assessments provide important information regarding the individual learning needs of each student. The South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE), in accordance with State Board of Education Regulation 43- 220, requires the administration, scoring, and reporting of a norm-referenced test system for these purposes. The tests include aptitude (verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal), achievement in reading comprehension, and achievement in mathematics concepts and problem solving. The CogAT measures aptitude and the ITBS is a measure of student achievement.

What is CogAT?

The Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) assesses learned reasoning abilities of students. The CogAT focuses on three areas of reasoning that research shows are closely related to success in school (1) The Verbal Battery measures students’ ability to reason with words and solve verbal problems. (2) The Quantitative Battery assesses their ability to organize and reason with quantitative concepts. (3) The Nonverbal Battery tests students’ ability to reason with figural drawings and invent strategies to solve novel problems. Since cognitive growth is a developmental process, performance on the CogAT can be given meaning by comparing an individual’s scores to those of a representative sample of peers who are the same age or who are in the same grade in school. Even though it measures reasoning abilities that are a critical component of all definitions of intelligence, the CogAT is not an intelligence test.

What is the Iowa Assessment?

The Iowa Assessment is a comprehensive standardized assessment test which evaluates a student’s level in the major subject areas including Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Science. The language arts section includes reading vocabulary, and word analysis to assess how well students can recognize letters and letter-sound relationships. Reading comprehension is assessed using print, context, and picture cues to identify unfamiliar words; completing sentences that tell about a picture by choosing a word for filling in a blank; and answering multiple-choice questions after reading a brief story. The math section includes math concepts and problem solving which involves solving brief word problems and interpreting information presented in graphs and tables.

Most young children have had little or no experience with standardized tests and, therefore, do not have any preconceived notions, either positive or negative, about testing. There is no need to be anxious about the testing. Students can be reminded that the teacher will use the results to better understand each student’s progress. No special preparation is required of students beyond getting a good night’s sleep and having a nutritious breakfast. Parents will receive a summary of test results in early 2027 and prior to the end of the school year will be notified about potential qualification for gifted and talented programs.

Belvedere Elementary

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