From Question to Breakthrough: Rethinking Ability Testing

At a glance: 

• Traditional gifted tests often measure exposure, not potential, favoring students who have had greater access to language, vocabulary, and academic learning opportunities. 

• The Naglieri General Ability Tests emerged from years of collaboration and research, intentionally designed to assess verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal reasoning without reliance on language-heavy instructions. 

• When unnecessary barriers are removed, research shows ability is more evenly distributed across student groups, pointing toward a fairer future for gifted identification. 

Every meaningful innovation begins with a question that refuses to go away. 

For Dr. Jack Naglieri, that question surfaced early in his career as a school psychologist and followed him for decades as he evaluated students using traditional gifted testing methodologies: Are we measuring how students think—or are we measuring what they’ve had the opportunity to learn? 

The answer to that question, and the determination to do better by students, ultimately led to the creation of the Naglieri General Ability Tests. But this wasn’t a single moment of inspiration. It was a long arc of research, reflection, collaboration, and refinement that was shaped by real classrooms, real children, and real inequities. 

Seeing the problem firsthand    

Early in his work as a school psychologist, Jack Naglieri, Ph.D. noticed something troubling. The tests most commonly used to evaluate students’ ability relied heavily on language, vocabulary, and academic knowledge. Over time, it became increasingly clear that students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds were often being underestimated, not because they lacked ability, but because the tests demanded knowledge these students had not yet had the opportunity to learn. 

This realization reshaped his thinking about what ability tests should do. 

One of the earliest breakthroughs in this journey came from a simple but powerful insight: If you take knowledge out of the equation, you can measure children’s general ability more accurately.  

The development of the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT) provided a way to measure general ability without relying on language or academic knowledge. Its widespread use reinforced a critical insight: when a test of general ability is constructed using questions that can be solved by thinking rather than knowing, many students’ ability become more visible. The NNAT, using a nonverbal test format, played an essential role in shaping future thinking by showing what was possible when fairness and access were placed at the center of test design.  

At that point, Jack Naglieri had the good fortune to collaborate with two extraordinary leaders in the field of gifted education who were also grappling with fundamental questions of fairness and access: Could general ability be assessed in a way that was fair for all students using verbal and quantitative formats, in addition to nonverbal ones? And how could such tests be designed so that they did not rely on spoken or written language, thereby removing barriers for students who had not yet had the opportunity to acquire those language skills? 

These questions were at the center of many conversations among Jack Naglieri, Ph.D., Dina Brulles, Ph.D. and Kimberly Lansdowne, Ph.D. All three shared decades of experience working directly with students, teachers, and school systems, and all three had seen how traditional identification practices excluded students with potential to accel academically if given the opportunity to learn. 

At one point, the idea sounded almost impossible. Measuring verbal reasoning without words? Quantitative reasoning without language-heavy instructions?

Collaboration turns possibility into design 

What followed was not a quick development cycle, but years of careful thinking, research, and iteration. 

Each collaborator brought a distinct lens: 

• Jack Naglieri contributed decades of research in cognitive assessment and a relentless focus on measuring general ability rather than acquired knowledge. 

• Dina Brulles, drawing on her experience as a gifted program coordinator and ELL and bilingual teacher, focused on how students may demonstrate potential and how traditional methods for measuring ability can obscure outcomes in gifted testing.  

• Kimberly Lansdowne applied extensive expertise in mathematics education to develop assessments of quantitative reasoning that privilege patterns, relationships, and logical reasoning over the recall of academic knowledge and reliance on traditional word problems. 

Together, they asked a guiding question at every step in the development of the tests:  

 Does this measure thinking or does it reward what they have had the opportunity to learn? 

The result of this collaboration was a new framework for assessing general ability—one that looks familiar on the surface but is fundamentally different in execution and in outcomes. 

The Naglieri General Ability Tests (Naglieri—Verbal, Naglieri—Nonverbal, and Naglieri—Quantitative) were designed to assess general ability. Test directions, content, and student verbal responses are often obstacles for some gifted students. Therefore, Jack, Dina, and Kim created general ability tests that have verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal content without:  

• test questions that require advanced academic knowledge 

• the use of a specific language 

• instructions that demand verbal comprehension 

Even the instructions were rethought. Instead of lengthy spoken or written directions, students learn what to do through language-free animated instructions, allowing them to focus their cognitive energy on solving problems rather than decoding expectations. 

More than a test, an evolution in thinking

From the beginning, the authors were clear: good intentions were not enough. Any new test needs a clear vision of what to measure (e.g., general ability), how to measure it (use three types of item content) and how to ensure that the three separate tests can be solved regardless of the language a child speaks, and ensure that there is strong evidence that the tests work as expected. Large-scale research studies were conducted with MHS to examine whether these tests truly reduced differences associated with race, ethnicity, gender, language, and parental education level. The findings reinforced what the team had hoped and worked toward for decades: when unnecessary barriers are removed, ability looks far more evenly distributed across student groups traditional measures suggested. 

This evidence wasn’t just validation; it was confirmation that the original question, “Are we measuring thinking or opportunity to learn?” had been the right one to ask. 

The story of the Naglieri General Ability Tests (Naglieri Verbal, Naglieri Nonverbal, and Naglieri Quantitative) is about an evolution in how general ability itself is understood and measured. It’s also the story of three educational professionals who refused to accept inequity as inevitable. Of practitioners who knew that potential often goes unseen. And of a collaboration that transformed decades of insight into a practical, scalable solution. 

At its core, this journey reflects a simple but powerful belief: When we change how we measure general ability, we change the face of gifted education.

Learn more about designing gifted education programs with purpose, read our blog. 

Want to learn more about the authors of the Naglieri General Ability Tests? Visit their website here.  

Have questions about the Naglieri General Ability Tests? Get in touch with a member of our team.