Y7 CATs: Ignorance is bliss?

[PiqueABoo]

DD's school told the parents what their children scored in the CATs.

I've never wanted to get her IQ tested or anything like that, because at some level I didn't want to run the risk of being disappointed by the results and/or being trapped i.e. feeling compelled to Do Something[tm] as a consequence.

This is different from SATs somehow and I'm growing to hate knowing: it's like we've taken an unpredictable, fluttering butterfly and pinned it firmly to a board so everyone knows exactly where it is for eternity.

Is this a weird reaction? If not do you get over it by-and-by?

[I do know what they do and don't tell you, the reliability and so on but that doesn't help.]

I have the opposite experience to Oliveoil DD had high CAT scores, but school thought she didn't push herself. In truth they didn't look in detail at the scores which showed indications of dyslexia.

It's left as an exercise to the reader as to why the central theory of comprehensive education is that IQ testing at age 11 is unreliable, has no theoretically or methodologically sound evidence behind it and results in pigeonholing children at a ludicrously early age on flimsy, "how were you on the day?" testing, while comprehensive school now you CAT tests, which are in almost every way indistinguishable from the 11+ --- high stakes exams taken once, claiming to have the ability to detect fundamental "intelligence" from which decisions on education can be made.

CAT scores are a statistical tool. You can say that given a score of say 120 in Verbal Reasoning you have a (for example) 95% chance of getting a C or better in English GCSE, and given a score of 85 (say) 15%.

Those are aggregate statistics across hundreds of thousands, and they are quite accurate, but they never give certainties and there are other data available.

It has been a long time but I recall being thrown by N-VR questions the first time I saw them, then figuring out generic strategies and 'rules' for answering them.

DD has never done this stuff before and her lowest score by a dozen points was for N-VR. The latter was her form's first CA sub-test on their very first day of secondary, so I'm willing to believe first-day anxiety threw spanners into the works for some children. I haven't got a clue whether the latter had any effect on DD, but I'm certain she could improve her N-VR test outcomes with practice.

"It's left as an exercise to the reader"

I tried that precise exercise when I first learnt about the prevalence of CAT testing in the secondary sector a few years ago, but I still haven't figured it out beyond throwing blame at computers for encouraging data delusions.

IQ is the best predictor we have though so I don't think it's fundamentally insane to look at it, the biggest problem seems to be the superficial approach to the outcomes i.e. I'm not convinced everyone making decisions based on these things has read and understood the small-print.

For instance I just googled and one CAT provider claims a 68% chance that any given child's score is +/- 5.0 points of their 'true' score. So for roughly a third of children...

I have a degree and a Masters in Law , yet I am absolutely useless at
CATS style tests.

My 2 son's school sent both back with an indepth analysis of their score!
Overall
VR
NVR
QR
I thought every school did this but judging by this i have been deluded for 5 years!

My 2 son's school sent both back with an indepth analysis of their score!

You can get massively detailed reports from astrologers too, you know. With graphs and numbers and all sorts.

CATs tests are not IQ tests. It takes far more time and expense to accurately assess a child's intelligence than a couple of multiple choice papers done on a wet September morning. Even the companies that produce CATs tests do not claim to test intelligence

As the makes say

"There is no such thing as a measure of innate ability. The quality of prior teaching, opportunities to learn, parental support, pupils' educational experience, and their emotional and physical well-being, including nutrition, will affect pupils' performance on all educational tests. However tests of the taught curriculum - reading, mathematics, spelling etc. - are likely to be influenced by these factors to a greater degree than reasoning tests."

www.gl-assessment.co.uk/products/cat-cognitive-abilities-test/cat-cognitive-abilities-test-faqs#faq3

Even then there are people who believe that the brain is like a muscle and you can improve a child's intelligence by sheer hard work. There are intelligences that CATs don't assess that can be harnessed to do well academically.

www.mindsetworks.com/webnav/whatismindset.aspx

I find it sad that some schools deny opportunites like triple science or two foreign langages to children because of low CAT scores. CATs are designed to pick out children who aren't reaching their full potential because of undiagnosed dyslexia. Low CATs results on their own should not be used for ablity setting. Thankfully my son's school ignores CATs and SATs. They prefer to assess the children themselves by using mixed ablity classes for the first half term.

I feel that child who gets into the top set by hard work should be allowed to do triple science or two foreign languages. Similarly a bright lazy child who under performs should be moved down a set or two.

Personally, I like receiving my children's CAT results.

If it helps at all, as others have said, the results do not define your child. At our school, they are not even the sole determiner, or even the most important determiner of which set your child will go into. One of my sons has an exceptional mathematical talent. On the day of his Year 7 quantitative test, he was unwell, struggled through the test, was sent home immediately afterwards, and consequently scored considerably lower than he should have done. Made no difference to the set he went into. The funny side was that those Yr 7 tests were used by a computer to determine each child's yearly target levels and, every single year, ds was scoring 1, sometimes even 2 whole levels higher than the computer said he should in Maths.

Relax. They are just a tool the school uses to set your child's targets. One tool of many.

@ReallyTired, the GL-A FAQ also says (without giving us the numbers):

"In general, we find a high correlation between the CAT Verbal and Non-Verbal batteries and the WISC Verbal and Performance IQ respectively. Also, experimental work carried out in collaboration with the University of Sheffield in 2004 made it possible to equate CAT scores on one test with scores on the WISC, so that in psychological or clinical assessment of children, either test could be used to estimate performance on the other one."

I'm not sure it's a good thing to try and distance them too much e.g. here's a fun quote from Asbury & Plomin (behavioural genetics world) that I suspect is rooted in recent work around KS2 SATs and GCSE achievement:

"If IQ and achievement were the same thing, perfect predictors of each other, then they would correlate 1.00, a perfect correlation. In fact they correlate more like 0.50. For every child the relationship between IQ and achievement will vary in strength at different ages and stages. A great big chunk of school achievement is entirely independent of IQ."

I think Dweck's work is largely about motivation and achievement, so largely fits in the IQ independent chunk and is not really about improving a child's intelligence. I don't know though, so if anyone is aware a some lovely longitudinal study on mindsets and increases in IQ scores or similar, then I'm all ears.

My DS has had CATs and BASII and the two did not correlate. I think this was because the BASII was verbally administrated and tested different things such as "expressive language" which was clearly beyond the remit of the CATS. DS has dyslexia (as does perhaps 10% of the population) and so any test based on reading could be problematic.

I don't think anybody on here is saying that any of these tests are the "be all and end all". It goes without saying that many other factors are involved. I found the BASII test useful because of the dyslexia but the CATs test a concern because it gave dodgy results.

"I think this was because the BASII was verbally administrated"

That seems highly likely: GL-A say all bets are off if the test process is significantly different to the one used for their trials/calibration/whatever-they-call-it, including reading tests to the child, taking the components of the tests in a different order etc.

I don't believe that something as complex as intelligence can be summerized as a test score. I feel that CATs tests do have a place in schools but the results should be kept within the SEN department. Teachers should only be told a child's CATs test results IF there is evidence that a child has underachieved in prior tests.

I agree that Dweck's work is largely about moviation and achievement, however she talks on the internet about one of her teachers who sat the children in IQ order in the sixth grade. The children with lower IQs were not allowed to carry the flag or use the board rubber. The teacher had low expectations lower scoring based on one test.

chrishildrew.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/becoming-a-growth-mindset-school/

Ironically Dweck's class was for gifted and talent students and all the children in that class were capable of achievement. She make it clear that such a mindset made the more able children fear failure and not try.

I feel its vital to find out why some gifted children underachieve. For example praising a child for being clever or high achievement can be really damaging. The view that having to make an effort to learn new skills means someone is no longer gifted is a cause of underachievement.

Neither of my DDs has had to do CATs (SSGS). Which is lucky. Dyslexic DS who is at a comp did have to do CATs, bombed them (not surprisingly) and was placed in lowish sets initially. He was, quite swiftly (before the first half term in Y7) moved up in all the setter subjects, even English (where he only moved up one set, but it was a psychological boost since he moved from the lowest 'medium achievers' set to the lowest 'high achievers set' (which was probably working at a lower level than the highest 'medium achievers' set but which was timetabled to fit in with the top maths sets etc. I didn't actually have a problem (much) with his English set, I had a massive problem with his maths set but by the time I'd found out what had happened (from the SENCO - results aren't routinely provided to parents, nor are explanations of sets, understandably) he had already been shifted to the most appropriate sets for his abilities and challenges. My conclusion (obviously based on this one child) is that CATs might be great for NT kids but not for those with complex issues such as AS, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia etc. Or indeed for the nervy or fearful of change (tests on the first day aren't going to suit everyone).

"Ironically Dweck's class.."

But that's an anecdote about an extreme example from way, way back and not decent evidence.

My problem with 'mindsets' is that it has turned into life-style stuff with all the trappings associated with some new faddish diet and along the way it has stretched to accommodate a lot of simplistic assertions, opinions and ideology. There are 1001+ educational blogs/articles proclaiming the virtues but most read like received opinion i.e. they're saying it because someone else said it and it sounds like a lovely idea. However this is one that I like and think is worth reading:

evidenceintopractice.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/growth-mindset-its-not-magic/