The Ultimate Guide to Gifted Assessment in Miami-Dade County

Two children reading a book, Gifted Assessment Psychologist Miami FL

I find that many parents aren’t quite sure what the Gifted program entails. They’re even more confused about how eligibility works in Miami-Dade. So here’s ALL the information you could ever want to know about gifted assessment for the school district.

What is the Gifted program?

The Gifted program allows children who demonstrate advanced intelligence and superior academic performance to benefit from an enriched curriculum. They are placed in a separate classroom with a teacher that has received additional training in instructional strategies for advanced learners and their social and emotional needs.

What are the benefits of the Gifted program? 

Sometimes gifted classrooms have a lower student-to-teacher ratio which allows for more individualized attention for each child. However, the size of gifted classes is on the rise as more parents seek to have their children placed in their school’s gifted program.

Other benefits include a boost to the child’s self-esteem, challenging and engaging schoolwork, and socializing with peers that share similar interests and desires for learning.

What is a gifted assessment like?

In most school districts across the US, becoming eligible for gifted starts with the child’s teacher referring the child to the school’s psychologist. The school psychologist then administers an intelligence (IQ) test. The most common IQ tests used for gifted assessment are the RIAS-2 and the WISC-V. IQ tests consist of tasks that measure many different cognitive abilities including verbal reasoning, nonverbal reasoning, verbal and nonverbal memory, working memory, and processing speed. From an outsider’s perspective the tasks look like:

  • vocabulary questions
  • word riddles
  • visual puzzles
  • trivia questions
  • memory games
  • playing with blocks
  • matching games
  • “which one doesn’t belong” puzzles