Local Norms for Gifted and Talented Student Identification: Everything you Need to Know Institutional Repository Document

Conversations over who should be identified as gifted continue perpetually both within the field and in the popular media. In this paper, 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 paper, we define local norms, explain their purpose, provide examples of schools who have used local norms, discuss common challenges, and finally we provide a how to tutorial on how schools can begin to use local norms as part of their gifted identification process.