Making the Cut in Gifted Selection: Score Combination Rules and Their Impact on Program Diversity

Abstract

The recommendation of using “multiple measures” is common in policy guidelines for gifted and talented assessment systems. However, the integration of multiple test scores in a system that uses cut-scores requires choosing between different methods of combining quantitative scores. Past research has indicated that OR combination rules (where any one score must meet the cutoff) have been shown to identify the largest number of students compared with AND (where all scores must meet cutoff) and AVERAGE (where the numerical average is used) rules. We extended this work to a real data set (Grades K to 5 from the CogAT 7 national standardization data) and found that the different combination rules led to differences in the number and diversity of students identified. However, we found these diversity differences were due mainly to the identified pool size and not to the effects of the particular combination rule. This has important implications for practice.