My daughter is being screened for the gifted program. She was screened last year but did not pass. (She was given the NNAT, although she's highly verbal. Visual-spatial tasks are not her area of strentgh). The state of AL uses the NNAT, OLSAT, K-BIT, and Slosson for screening purposes, although most school systems seem to use the NNAT and OLSAT much more. In looking at the matrix that AL uses, students must earn much higher scores on the K-BIT and Slosson to earn matrix points corresponing to much lower NNAT and OLSAT scores. Does anyone know why this might be? The means and sd's are the same for these tests, right? It doesn't make sense to me to use different cut off scores in this situation.

If my daughter doesn't pass the screening this time, she might still qualify after taking the OLSAT in the spring. Every teacher who has had her since nursery school has commented on her intelligence. Even her softball coach has made such comments. Her achievement test scores are always very high (97th-99th percentiles). We are hoping she will qualify for services this year. Her teacher says she's having trouble keeping her challenged.

Parents can refer students, but systems here screen. They look at aptitude (a screener only), characteristics, and three areas of achievement. All points are entered in a matrix. A score of 17/20 points results in automatic eligibility. Students with 14-16 points (in our system) are given an individual IQ test to determine eligibility. Our system uses the NNAT for screening, which I believe penalizes my highly verbal child who is not strong on visual-spatial tasks. They will look at OLSAT scores, too. All 3rd graders take the OLSAT in the spring.

That's great that parents can request full testing in PA! I wish we could do that. We could pay to have private testing, but the school is not obligated to accept the results.

Yes, she only got a 110 on the NNAT, which gave her 0 points on the matrix. I believe that her IQ is much higher than 110. The aptitude part is worth 5 points. She had 13 points overall, so she did quite well on the other parts. If she doesn't get in this year I'll push the issue. She moved up to the intermediate school this year, so there will be a different teacher testing her. I don't know if that makes a difference, but the primary teacher struck me as flaky.

Thanks for your input!