State Definition of AIG Students, Article 9B (N.C.G.S. § 115C-150.5)
“Academically or intellectually gifted students perform or show the potential to perform at substantially high levels of accomplishment when compared with others of their age, experience, or environment. Academically or intellectually gifted students exhibit high performance capability in intellectual areas, specific academic fields, or in both the intellectual areas and specific academic fields. Academically or intellectually gifted students require differentiated educational services beyond those ordinarily provided by the regular educational program. Outstanding abilities are present in students from all cultural groups, across all economic strata, and in all areas of human endeavor.”
CFCI employs three main criteria for AIG Identification to refer, screen, and identify students for gifted services in grades K-8: Aptitude, Achievement, and Artifacts.
- Aptitude: A student with advanced aptitude has a high ability to think critically and verbally and/or nonverbally reason and problem solve. This will be documented and measured by a nationally-normed aptitude assessment, such as the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT).
- Achievement: A student with advanced achievement has demonstrated an advanced level of content knowledge in either reading and/or math. This is documented and measured by the North Carolina End-of-Grade/Course assessments and/or the MAP Growth assessments in both reading and math.
- Artifacts: Artifacts are documented by a body of evidence that may include: observational checklists (student, parent, teacher); rating scales; student surveys or interviews; other assessment data; student support data; advanced student work samples, etc
As a parent or guardian of a CFCI student, you may refer your child anytime for giftedness identification. Review of these referrals occur throughout the year but if additional testing is needed that would occur during our fall and/or spring testing windows.
As a school of inquiry, students’ academic and intellectual gifts are nurtured in their regular education classrooms; teachers look for and collect artifacts of gifted characteristics and learning is differentiated to meet individual student needs. All referrals will be shared with the classroom teacher to help best understand and meet your child’s needs.
About the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT)
As part of CFCI’s universal screening and gifted identification processes, the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) will be administered to all fourth graders in the fall of each school year. This assessment indicates the level and pattern of cognitive development of a student in comparison to their grade and age-level peers.
Cognitive ability refers to a student’s readiness to learn in different situations and environments and demonstrate creative problem-solving skills. Unlike a traditional achievement test, which measures how well a student has mastered the curriculum, the CogAT shows us how well a child can reason abstractly and identify patterns and relationships in the world around them.
The CogAT measures reasoning in three areas that are based on the most important ways students and teachers communicate in the classroom: Verbal, Nonverbal, and Quantitative. Students take three subtests in each domain and are given a specific amount of time to work though each subtest independently. The entire CogAT takes about three hours to administer and is scheduled over multiple days.
Following testing, families will receive their child's CogAT score report. The test results show your child’s ranking within the national percentile for verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal reasoning. A percentile rank is not the same as the percent correct (i.e. percentile rank of 60 would mean that the student scored at or higher than 60% of students who are the same age).
A CogAT ability profile captures both the patterns and level of a student’s scores on the three CogAT batteries. It includes a student’s median age stanine (their median level of reasoning ability), score pattern indicator, and relative strengths and weaknesses. The ability profile assists with locating specific instructional suggestions for helping the students learn based on the student’s CogAT scores.
For more information on how to interpret your child’s Ability Profile, please visit the Interactive Ability Profile Interpretation System. At this website, you can input your child’s score profile and then read a brief description of their learned reasoning abilities as well as instructional suggestions.