Universal Screening in Practice: A Comparative Study of the CogAT and ACT Aspire for Gifted Identification

Research shows that many academically accomplished students from disadvantaged backgrounds are not identified for gifted and talented programs. This study investigates a large sample of more than 10,000 students that took both the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) and the American College Testing (ACT) Aspire test. We examined test similarities and differences with an eye to widen the net for gifted identification in practice. This study demonstrates that the ACT Aspire and CogAT have a significant overall correlation of r = .59. However, the correlation varies across cohorts noticeably from r = .72 to r = .46. This variation in correlations and inconsistency in the predictive nature of diversity of both tests across cohorts suggests greater caution in the interchangeable use of the ACT Aspire and CogAT as gifted indicators. Our findings support the practice of using more than one test as part of the identification process.