Local Norms for Gifted and Talented Student Identification: Everything You Need to Know

Conversations over who should be identified as gifted continue perpetually both within the field and in the popular media. In this article, we focus on the use of local norms as one approach to gifted identification that can increase the equity of advanced educational programs and services while also better achieving their stated purpose of providing additional challenge to those students who need it. In this article, we define local norms, explain their purpose, provide examples of schools that have used local norms, discuss common challenges, and provide a tutorial and external resources on how schools can begin to use local norms as part of their gifted identification process.