Referral or screening everyone? How US schools find gifted kids

11 October 2026 · 5 min read

There are two ways a school can find gifted children. It can wait for a parent or teacher to refer a child for testing. Or it can test every child in a grade — universal screening. The choice turns out to matter a great deal, and one study shows exactly how much.

What happened in one Florida district

In 2005, a large and diverse Florida school district began giving every second grader a short non-verbal reasoning test, the NNAT, in class. Children who scored high enough went on to an individual IQ test with a school psychologist, as before. The bar for being identified as gifted did not change. What changed was who got to the bar.

Among children from low-income families and English learners, the share identified as gifted roughly tripled, from 1.4% to 4.3%.
The odds of being identified rose 118% for Hispanic children and 74% for Black children, against about 12% for white children.
Many of the newly identified children scored well above the cut-off. They were not borderline cases; they had simply never been referred.

Why referral misses children

The authors’ conclusion is blunt: “parents and teachers often fail to recognize the potential of poor and minority students.” A referral depends on someone noticing, and on a parent knowing the program exists and how to ask. A test given to everyone doesn’t.

The study has a sobering end. When budget cuts suspended the screening in 2010, the share of third graders in gifted programs fell back to where it had been before.

Building the skill, either way

Screening or referral, the tests look at reasoning: finding a rule in words, numbers or shapes. That grows with practice that asks a child to explain, not just answer. How gifted testing works across the US.

Sources

Card, D. & Giuliano, L. (2016). Universal screening increases the representation of low-income and minority students in gifted education. PNAS, 113(48), 13678–13683

From the makers of this blog

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Cub Climb is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any school board, test publisher or testing organisation. CogAT, NNAT, OLSAT, CCAT-7, CAT4 and other test names are trademarks of their respective owners.