Grade 4 Universal Assessment

Lewisville ISD routinely administers universal assessments/screenings to identify students with exceptional ability or potential at specific grade levels. These assessments are only intended for students who have not yet participated in a gifted assessment during the current school year. Results are used to determine those students who meet criteria for additional evaluations related to gifted/talented (G/T) services.

Students identified as gifted/talented in the U.S. make up approximately 6-10% of the total student population, so by its very nature, only a small portion of students will be eligible for services.

For the 26-27 school year, universal assessment of grade 4 students will take place during the fall semester.

This replaces the ability assessment phase for gifted/talented (G/T) qualification that typically takes place after a formal parent or staff referral.

ALL students in grade 4 will take the Naglieri General Ability Tests below.

Naglieri Verbal (V)

The Naglieri-V test uses universally recognized pictures that are appropriate across cultures, representing verbal concepts, rather than presenting questions orally or in writing. The test questions require students to understand the relationships among six pictures to determine what verbal concept is shared by five of the pictures and which does not represent the concept.

Naglieri Nonverbal (NV)

The Naglieri-NV test is comprised of questions that are presented using diagrams and pictorial formats. These questions require the students to decipher the logic behind the relationships among shapes, their color, sequences, orientation, etc. to determine which option completes the pattern.

Naglieri Quantitative (Q)

The Naglieri-Q test is composed of questions that are presented using numbers and shapes arranged in a pattern. The test items require students to examine the relationship, patterns, and sequences among numbers and/or symbols using basic math concepts. There are no math word problems so the items can be solved regardless of one's language(s).

Due to recommendations from test developers, the Naglieri General Ability Tests will only be administered once per school year to ensure test reliability. Students who do not meet criteria for additional G/T evaluation in grade 4 may not be eligible for a formal parent or staff referral again until one year has passed from the date of the current assessment.

The Naglieri General Ability Tests are only offered as online assessments and are administered in a secure browser. LISD currently conducts this testing on student iPads under the supervision of the campus G/T Facilitator.

Each assessment contains three sample items and 40 test items arranged in order of increasing difficulty.

test within 20 to 25 minutes.

The Naglieri General Ability Tests have three key features.

• The instructions for the test are displayed as animated videos. This approach visually demonstrates to the students what they need to do rather than verbally telling them what they need to do.
• The test items consist of questions presented using diagrams, numbers, and pictures so that there is minimal reliance on academic skills and ensures that the test items can be solved regardless of the language used by the student.
• The need for the student to answer questions verbally or in a written format is eliminated by using a visual multiple-choice response format.

Some types of assessments that are given in schools are assessments that children should prepare to take. These types of tests are designed to measure retention of content knowledge learned in class and include unit tests given during the school year, end of year standardized tests, spelling tests, math tests, etc. They are administered so teachers will know what a child understands about the curriculum and what supports they may need.

Ability tests used for LISD's Universal Assessment are intended to determine a child's general ability in comparison to their peers. The developers of the Naglieri General Ability Tests discourage the use of test preparation guides and materials since they can inhibit student performance when taking tests. As a result, none are available. The overall goal of an ability test is to measure students' true reasoning ability, not their learned knowledge.

Helping at Home

• Explain that it's important to look at the questions carefully. Even though the tests have time limits, students should review each question and all of the possible answers.
• Share that questions increase in difficulty throughout the test and that students are unlikely to know the answers for every question.
• Discuss that while there are several choices, only one answer is correct.
• Explain how to work through the process of elimination, as these tests involve multiple-choice questions.
• Practice sitting still and attending to a task for twenty or thirty minutes at a time.
• Make sure your child is physically comfortable and can advocate for themselves if they are not.

Campus G/T Facilitators follow all allowable accommodations for students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) or 504 Plans.

Common accommodations include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Extended testing time
• Use of prompter to record student responses
• Frequent breaks
• Small group/individual testing

Specific colors were carefully selected to be used in the Naglieri General Ability Tests and were tested to ensure that students with color-vision deficits would be able to discriminate between those colors. The colors used in every item were distinguishable under the following conditions of color-vision deficits: monochromacy (complete), monochromacy (partial), protanopia or deuteranopia (complete red-green), protanomaly or deuteranomaly (partial red-green), tritanopia (complete blue-yellow), and tritanomaly (partial blue-yellow).

The Naglieri General Ability Tests are appropriate for use with students who have auditory deficits as the questions do not contain any auditory output. The directions are presented using an animated instructional video with no audio component.

The Naglieri General Ability Tests are accessible to English Language Learners (ELLs). The directions are presented using an animated instructional video with no language requirements. Minimal English language is used by the Test Administrator to provide basic directions for the tests (e.g., “select the Play button”).

The Naglieri General Ability Tests are appropriate for use with students with motor challenges. The Test Administrator should be available to assist with inputting responses if the student has limited motor skills and is unable to control the input device.

The Naglieri General Ability Tests are scored automatically through the MHS Group Insights platform. Test results will be available once the testing window has closed and all information has been reviewed. Parents can expect home reports by late December/early January. Please note that test content is confidential and cannot be shared with third parties, so specific questions from the test cannot be discussed.

Student scores in LISD are reported by Percentile Rank which describes a student’s performance relative to that of other students. They are not an indication of how many questions a student answered correctly. Percentiles show how well a student performed when compared to other students the same age who have also taken the test(s).

This score ranges from 1 to 99 (note that in order to differentiate the very top of the distribution, scores of 99.0 to 99.4 are denoted as "99," while scores ≥ 99.5 are denoted as “>99”). A student scoring a Percentile Rank of 96 performed better than 96% of students in the norm testing group.

The higher the Percentile Rank, the better the student’s performance on the test.

• Very high = 96th-99th percentile
• Above average = 77th-95th percentile
• Average = 23rd-76th percentile
• Below average = 22nd percentile or lower

Students who qualify for gifted/talented (G/T) services in LISD have strong performance on both ability and achievement tests.

Ability tests are predictors of potential for academic success and tap into a wider range of life experiences. They look at whether students can apply what they know in new and different ways. These assessments examine innate learning rather than school-based learning.

The Naglieri General Ability Tests used by LISD are ability tests. These are not assessments for which a student could practice specific content and score better. They measure a student’s ability to think and solve any given problem.

LISD students with strong ability assessment scores are given achievement tests.

Achievement tests are different than criterion-referenced tests, such as STAAR, which compare student knowledge and skills against a predetermined standard, cut score, or other criterion.

The assessments do not measure how students think or what their potential may be. They show what a student already knows or understands about a specific content area.

In LISD, achievement test data is used to determine the level to which G/T pull-out services may impact general academic learning progress. Students may not qualify for elementary G/T services based on high achievement alone.

We strive to identify and engage a diverse population of gifted/talented students, build relationships that support student growth, ignite within students a desire for learning, and provide services and supports to meet students' unique social-emotional and educational needs every day.

Website: https://www.lisd.net/Page/1721
Location: 1565 West Main Street, Lewisville, TX, USA
Phone: 469-948-8046
Twitter: @LISD_GT