Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools gifted (AIG) screening and CogAT guide.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS) calls its program Gifted Education; North Carolina's state term is AIG, Academically or Intellectually Gifted. CHCCS identifies students with the CogAT, the Cognitive Abilities Test, which covers verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal reasoning.

This guide is for families in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. It is based on the district's 2025-2028 AIG plan and its referral and identification guide.

What CHCCS says about identification

All 3rd graders are automatically included in the universal screen. No referral is needed, and parents who do not want their child tested can opt out through the school's Gifted Education Specialist. After the CogAT, students take the reading and math TerraNova as an achievement measure.

The district publishes its criteria, which is less common than it should be. For academic gifted identification, a student needs the 90th percentile on the CogAT Verbal battery or the combined Quantitative and Nonverbal batteries, plus a 90th percentile achievement score (such as the Beginning of Grade reading test in 3rd grade, an End of Grade test, or the TerraNova), plus qualitative evidence like a gifted characteristics checklist. School-based teams review all of it.

The Intellectually Gifted category is worth knowing about: it relies on a CogAT standard age score of 125 or higher and does not require high achievement scores. The CogAT's Nonverbal battery is the closest in format to the NNAT®: visual pattern and spatial reasoning with no reading demand.

The 5th grade rescreen is the second chance

If your child is not identified in 3rd grade, 5th grade is the next planned opportunity. Any 5th grader can opt in, and a parent, teacher, administrator, or the student can make the referral. In 2024-25, 5th grade referrals were due to the school Gifted Education Specialist in late October, so the deadline comes early in the year. Students identified as Emerging Talent in 3rd grade are included automatically.

New-to-district students in grades 4-8 are referred through the Gifted Education Specialist or, for summer testing, the Director of Advanced Learning.

Questions Chapel Hill-Carrboro parents should ask

1. What are this year's CogAT and TerraNova dates at our school?
2. How do I opt out, and is there a deadline?
3. If my child was identified as Emerging Talent, what happens in 5th grade?
4. When is the 5th grade rescreen referral due this year?
5. When and how will we receive identification results?
6. What service does my child receive if identified in reading, math, or both?

Our broader questions to ask your school guide can help you turn those into one clear conversation with the school's Gifted Education Specialist.

How to prepare without adding pressure

Keep it short: 10 to 15 minutes a day is plenty for a 3rd grader, starting with simple puzzles and talking through the reasoning. Practice teaches your child what the questions look like and gives them ways to approach and think through them, so test day feels familiar instead of surprising. Before test day, work up to at least two full timed practice tests so pacing is not a surprise. Our guide to preparing a young child for a gifted test covers the approach.