Understand Your Abilities. Find Your Strengths. Chart Your Own Path.
Good assessments can provide insights about or a "snapshot" of academic achievement, instructional readiness, and various types of abilities related to school learning and cognitive development. Understanding a student’s academic potential and current level of achievement are important to the talent development process. Assessment for talent development is aimed at identifying strengths and determining the need for enrichment, acceleration, or supplemental programming.
Tests are one of the tools of assessment. School-based tests are often designed to measure academic achievement on grade level content or benchmarks. They are helpful starting points for guiding decisions. However, particularly for older students, grade-level tests, even computer-adaptive tests, can be limited in providing information about advanced learners' needs. This is where above-grade-level tests are useful. When we give younger students tests designed for other students--with more challenging content--the tests provide insights into academic ability and potential and allow CTD to recommend pathways for talent development and resources that go beyond a student's current grade level.
CTD offers a variety of grade-level and above-grade-level testing options for students. Choosing a test will depend on your child's age, experience in school, experience with testing, and the objectives for doing the assessment. Young children, students with limited testing experience, or students who need a benchmark of their performance against grade-level peers and content, should consider a grade-level assessment. Older students who are already demonstrating high achievement or advanced learning needs are likely to be ready for an above-grade-level test that will provide access to more advanced content and the opportunity to benchmark their learning against other advanced learners.
Following testing, CTD provides recommended pathways for talent development, normative data that provides a benchmark for understanding performance, resources for instruction and programming, and access to a supportive, community of experts.
CTD uses child-friendly and internationally recognized standardized tests that help determine readiness for CTD’s advanced enrichment classes, provide insights into emerging academic strengths, and resources that explain the test results.
Grade-Level Assessment Tools: Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA), NWEA Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), and Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT)
Through CTD's above-grade-level assessment program, students take a test designed for older students. This research-based approach to assessment helps pinpoint strengths, indicate readiness for acceleration, and guide long-term planning. When applying for CTD accelerated courses, above-grade-level assessment is a helpful tool for demonstrating readiness.
Above-Grade-Level Assessment Tools: Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT), SAT ® , or ACT ®
