ABSTRACT
Coordinators of gifted and talented services need a variety of data to understand students’ current academic performance as well as their potential for advanced academic performance. There are a variety of standardized assessments that provide quantitative data to inform these decisions. In this chapter, we provide an overview of measures of ability and achievement. Each assessment provides different information about what a student can currently do academically as well as what is possible to achieve with the right learning opportunities. Making inferences from test scores to academic needs requires educators to be informed about what is being measured as well as how scores are influenced by student background and prior educational experiences. The specific choice of an assessment must always be driven by student characteristics and the types of information needed to inform service and program decisions. We review the interpretation of various types of assessment data in the context of making data-based and equity-informed use of tests as a part of a decision-making process to identify students for gifted and talented services.
