Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment gifted on basis of I-Ready?

I'm wondering if giftedness can be identified on the basis of I-ready tests. My 8th grade daughter (13) has always scored very highly on those tests. She just got a 725 on her I-Ready Reading test, where the 99th percentile is 696. Doing the math, and assuming a bell curve distribution of scores, that would put her above the 99.95th percentile. She reads voraciously, constantly, and has always read stuff well above her age-level (eg. finishing the whole Harry Potter series at 6, and reading "Little Women" and Shirley Jackson at 7). He score in math is not as high, but is also above the 99th percentile. She's always gone to public schools in a poor inner city neighborhood, in which the teaching is abysmal and the classroom environment is completely chaotic, and we've never hot-housed her at home, apart from buying her books (which, at her rate of reading--2-3 each week--has been expensive). Anyway, can her I'Ready scores plus teacher assessments be sufficient to get her a gifted designation?

Welcome, Gntaylor!

There are actually at least two related but distinct questions here:

1. Do the data suggest that your DC is gifted?
2. Are the data sufficient to qualify your DC for gifted services in your district?

I would say the answer to #1 is yes, academically, and to #2, it depends on your district policies.

FWIW, her reading score is nominally above the 99th %ile for grade ten as well (with caveats for a different and harder item set at that grade level), and meets the placement criteria of i-Ready for a grade 11 instructional level. (https://www.curriculumassociates.com/reviews/assessment/data-resources click on K-12 placement tables.) In reality, of course, her score is in the ceiling of the test, so this is an approximate and likely minimum placement level. Using the most recent i-Ready data tables (which are current for both the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 school years), and assuming Fall testing numbers, I get 99.7th percentile for grade eight, with 99th %ile = 693 (mean = 606, standard deviation = 43). (same page, click Diagnostic Data Tables Spreadsheet.) HOWEVER, the data tables clearly indicate that the scores are not normally distributed, so all of our estimates for percentiles that fall off the chart are suspect. On the +z side, it does appear that there is some semblance of a bell curve, but the -z side does not align with this, likely because the purpose of i-Ready is to identify students in need of remediation, who are performing below grade-level, so the test is designed to spread scaled scores in the lower half of the population much more than the upper half, who presumably are already reading at or above grade-level. (Sorry, probably way more on this than you needed to know! Bottom line, we know 99+ %ile, but can't say more precisely than that.)

With regard to #2, this might be enough to request evaluation for gifted services, but whether that is either effective or desirable is heavily dependent on your district circumstances. I would look into what might be useful and suitable for your child first, then see whether the district offers or might be persuaded into offering it, and finally consider advocacy for access to services.

Also, your public library may have a larger selection of e-books available. In our community, the major city library allows any resident of the state to obtain an e-borrower's card. We also have a voracious reader (last measured at 700 wpm in early elementary years, with a lexile then at late high school level; currently in the ceiling of commercially-available lexile measures; we had exactly the same Harry Potter series at six experience!), for whom I obtained library e-cards under my name and theirs, and on multiple libraries (local, regional), which, at six borrows per card, increased our library e-book throughput by a bit. Much cheaper than buying books!