What every parent needs to know about the biggest shift in gifted testing in a generation.

If you logged into your district website recently and noticed the word ‘NGAT’ where ‘CogAT’ used to be, you are not imagining things. And you are definitely not alone in feeling caught off guard.

School districts across the country, including some of the largest in the nation, are replacing the CogAT with a newer test called the NGAT, the Naglieri General Ability Tests. Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, one of the largest districts in America with over 190,000 students, has already made the switch completely. Beaverton, Oregon is phasing out the CogAT over the next two years. Denver, Colorado piloted NGAT in 2023 and has expanded it significantly since. And the list keeps growing.

If your child is heading into a gifted screening cycle, this matters for you RIGHT NOW. This article breaks down what the switch means, how the two tests compare, and exactly what you should do to help your child prepare.

**First: What Is the NGAT?**

The Naglieri General Ability Tests were developed by Dr. Jack Naglieri and published in 2021. The test comes in three separate sections: Verbal, Nonverbal, and Quantitative. What makes it fundamentally different from the CogAT is the design philosophy baked into every single question.

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Here is what that means in practice: every item on all three NGAT sections is picture-based. There are no words anywhere in the questions. The instructions themselves are delivered through an animated video, no proctor reads anything aloud. A child who arrived in your district last year and is still learning English faces the exact same test as a child who has been in the school system since kindergarten.

That is a significant departure from the CogAT, where verbal battery questions at the upper levels require reading comprehension and English vocabulary. The NGAT was deliberately designed to remove language from the equation entirely.

**Why Are Districts Making the Switch?**

The short answer is equity. For decades, researchers and educators have observed that gifted programs in the United States are dominated by white and affluent students, not because gifted ability is distributed that way, but because the traditional pathways to identification favor children who have had more academic exposure and better access to language-rich environments.

Studies estimate that roughly 1.25 million students who would qualify for gifted programs are never identified and the majority of them are Black, Hispanic, Native American, or multilingual learners. One landmark study from Broward County, Florida found that simply testing every student (rather than relying on teacher referrals) dramatically increased the number of gifted-identified students from underrepresented groups, without changing the eligibility standards at all.

The NGAT’s language-free design directly targets one of the most documented sources of bias in ability testing: the degree to which test performance reflects what a child has learned (or been taught) rather than how that child thinks.

Denver Public Schools reported that after piloting the NGAT, they saw meaningful increases in the identification of Black and multilingual students. Garfield Re-2 in Colorado reported that ‘the second-grade talent pool got much bigger’ after switching, because the test ‘eliminated the language piece of reading, replacing it with creativity and problem solving.’

State policy is accelerating the trend. Texas updated its gifted education administrative code in 2024 to require that students be assessed ‘in languages they understand or with nonverbal assessments.’ Arizona has added NGAT to its state-approved test list. Similar equity-driven frameworks exist in Colorado and Florida.

**CogAT vs. NGAT: A Side-By-Side Look**

Here is how the two tests compare on the dimensions that matter most to parents:

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One technical note worth knowing: CogAT uses a standard deviation of 16, while NGAT uses 15. This means a score of 130 represents slightly different performance levels on each test. Most districts wisely use percentile cutoffs rather than raw score cutoffs, which makes the comparison cleaner. But if your district posts score thresholds, it is worth asking whether they are percentile-based or standard-score-based.

**What the Three NGAT Sections Actually Look Like**

Since most parents have never seen an NGAT question, here is a plain-language description of each section.

**Verbal:** Students see six pictures of recognizable everyday objects. Five of the pictures share a common concept and the student has to identify the one that does NOT belong. No words appear anywhere. It tests verbal reasoning, but through visual relationships between objects rather than vocabulary or reading.

**Nonverbal:** Students analyze patterns and relationships among shapes, colors, sequences, and spatial arrangements, then select the image that completes the pattern. This is the section most similar to NNAT questions and to traditional matrix reasoning.

**Quantitative:** Students look at numbers and shapes arranged in patterns and sequences, then identify the relationship or complete the sequence. There are no word problems. A child who cannot read a word problem in English can still solve a quantitative pattern question.

Each section takes approximately 30 minutes. Districts can administer one, two, or all three sections depending on the grade level and their identification model. Beaverton, for example, administers one section per year across third, fourth, and fifth grade.

**What This Means for YOUR Child, Practically Speaking**

This is the part parents ask about most: does it help to prepare? And if so, how?

The NGAT’s official position discourages traditional test prep, and for good reason — rote memorization of question types can actually hurt performance when a child hits a question that looks slightly different and freezes. The NGAT is designed to assess reasoning, not test familiarity.

That said, there is meaningful preparation that is both appropriate and genuinely helpful.

FAMILIARITY WITH THE FORMAT matters enormously. Your child will be sitting at a computer, navigating between screens, and clicking answers. If your child, especially a kindergartner or first grader, is not comfortable using a mouse or a touchpad, that is worth practicing before test day. FCPS specifically defers testing for students who are still developing basic computer skills.

UNDERSTANDING THE ANIMATED INSTRUCTIONS helps too. Walk your child through what to expect: a video will show them how to answer questions, how to change an answer, and how to move forward. Nothing will be read to them by a teacher.

PRACTICING REASONING SKILLS, not memorizing answers, but actually working on pattern recognition, visual reasoning, and logical thinking, is both legitimate and effective. Puzzle books, logic games, and visual pattern activities all help build the kind of thinking the NGAT is designed to measure.

One thing that does NOT directly transfer: CogAT verbal prep. Word analogies, sentence completion drills, and vocabulary flashcards are designed for a word-based test. The NGAT verbal section uses pictures, not words. If your child has been preparing for CogAT, the quantitative and nonverbal prep will help more than the verbal prep will.

Interestingly, NNAT prep materials (for the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, the NGAT’s predecessor) are quite relevant to the NGAT nonverbal section. If you have access to NNAT practice resources, those transfer well.

**A Note for Parents of Verbally Strong Children**

This is worth addressing directly, because it is a real concern.

The CogAT verbal battery, word analogies, sentence completion, verbal classification historically rewarded children who are strong readers with rich vocabularies. These children often had a natural advantage on that section. The NGAT verbal section is a fundamentally different task: it requires a child to reason about the conceptual relationships between pictures of objects.

Some parents on gifted education forums have noted that this shift may not fully capture the abilities of children who are strongly verbally gifted in the traditional sense. That is a fair observation. The NGAT’s approach is equitable across language backgrounds, but it does measure verbal reasoning differently.

If your child is a strong verbal learner and your district is switching to NGAT, it is worth understanding this distinction and making sure your child gets practice with the picture-based verbal format so it does not catch them off guard on test day.

**Questions to Ask Your District**

If you have received a notice that your district is switching, here are the most useful questions to bring to your school’s gifted coordinator:

* Which NGAT sections will my child take, and in which grades?
* Does my child’s existing CogAT score still count toward gifted eligibility?
* What is the qualifying percentile threshold for NGAT scores?
* Is the district offering any informational sessions for parents about the new test?
* Will my child be tested on a computer or on paper?
* If my child is in the middle of a multi-year identification process, how does the transition affect their timeline?

**The Bottom Line**

The CogAT-to-NGAT switch is not just a name change. It represents a genuine philosophical shift in how ability is measured and who gets measured fairly.

If you are a parent whose child thrives in language-rich environments and has benefited from years of enrichment and vocabulary building, it is reasonable to pay close attention to how this change might affect your child’s test-taking experience. And if you are a parent whose child is multilingual, whose family is newer to the school system, or whose child thinks visually and spatially rather than verbally, this change may actually work in your child’s favor.

Either way, the most important thing you can do is understand what the test actually looks like, make sure your child is familiar with the format and comfortable with the technology, and help them practice the kind of visual reasoning and pattern recognition these questions require.

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**Want to Practice for the NGAT?**

[TestingMom.com](http://TestingMom.com) offers interactive NGAT practice questions for grades K through 8, covering all three sections — Verbal, Nonverbal, and Quantitative. Our questions are designed to help your child get familiar with the visual format and build the reasoning confidence they need to show what they are truly capable of.

You can start with 100 free practice questions today at [TestingMom.com](http://TestingMom.com), no commitment required.

*Published by TestingMom.com | testingmom.com/tests/ngat-naglieri-general-ability-test-overview/*

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