What Makes for an Effective Gifted and Talented Screener?

Universal screening is one of the most-common topics and well-accepted best practices within the field of gifted and talented education. There appears to be little disagreement that universally screening all students as part of a gifted and talented identification process results in fewer missed students. But surprisingly, there is little guidance on what makes for a quality universal screener—the tool that decides who needs further consideration. In this paper, we provide guidance that can help schools select the universal screener that helps them correctly identify as many students as possible at the lowest possible cost.