If your child's school recently mentioned the NGAT, you're probably here because you'd like a straight answer to a simple question: what is this test, and what does it mean for my kid? Here it is, without the jargon.
The short version
NGAT stands for the Naglieri General Ability Tests. It's a test of general reasoning ability — how a child thinks and solves new problems — developed by Jack A. Naglieri, Dina Brulles, and Kimberly Lansdowne and published by Multi-Health Systems (MHS). Schools use it as one input when deciding which students to consider for gifted and advanced-academic programs.
The key word is ability, not achievement. An achievement test asks what your child has already learned (spelling, multiplication facts). An ability test like the NGAT tries to measure reasoning that doesn't depend as heavily on what's been taught — pattern-finding, relationships, and logic.
What it measures: three kinds of reasoning
The NGAT is actually a small family of tests covering three reasoning areas. A school may use one or more of them:
- Verbal — the child looks at a set of pictures and figures out the concept that connects them (or the one that doesn't belong). Notably, it uses pictures rather than words, so it leans less on reading.
- Nonverbal — the child studies shapes, colors, sequences, and orientations in a pattern and picks the piece that completes it.
- Quantitative — the child finds the pattern in a series of numbers or symbols using basic math reasoning.
A deliberate design choice runs through all three: the test is built to reduce the load of language and acquired knowledge. Instructions are delivered through short animated videos rather than spoken or written directions, and answers are multiple-choice. The goal — in Naglieri's own framing — is to measure thinking, not knowing, so that a bright child who is still learning English, or who hasn't had a content-rich head start, can still show what they can do. (It's fair to call this a reduced-language design; it's not accurate to call any ability test perfectly "culture-free.")
How long it takes and how it's given
Each of the three tests takes roughly 30 minutes and is computer-based. Because the directions are animated rather than read aloud, a child doesn't need strong reading or listening comprehension just to understand what's being asked.
How it's scored
Your child's raw score (the number of items answered correctly) is converted into a standard score with an average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 — the same familiar scale used by most ability and IQ-type measures, where 100 is exactly average for a child's age.
Scores are also reported as a percentile rank (1 to 99) and a stanine (a simplified 1-to-9 band). The percentile is the number most parents find easiest to read: a percentile of 90 means the child scored as high as or higher than 90 out of 100 students who took the same test. (On the score report your district sends home, you'll typically see the standard score, the percentile, and the stanine together.)
Important: the NGAT doesn't decide on its own whether a child is "gifted." A score is one piece of a larger picture. Each district sets its own thresholds and combines the ability score with other information.
Who uses it (and why you might be hearing about it now)
The NGAT is newer than some long-running ability tests, and districts have been adopting it — often because its reduced-language design is seen as fairer across diverse student populations. Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), for example, adopted the NGAT in Fall 2025, where it replaced the CogAT (previously given to all 2nd graders) and the NNAT3 (previously given to all 1st graders). In FCPS it's administered in grade 2, with selected students also tested in grades 3–7. If your district recently switched, this is likely why the name is new to you.
What you can — and can't — ethically do to prepare
This is the question every parent actually has, so here's the honest answer.
You cannot and should not try to "teach the test." Ability tests are designed to measure reasoning, and drilling a child on leaked items doesn't build that reasoning — it just adds stress.
What genuinely helps is familiarity and calm: making sure your child has seen the format before (so the screen and the question types aren't a surprise), practicing the kinds of thinking the test rewards through everyday puzzles and games, and showing up rested and relaxed. A calm, familiar test-taker performs closer to their true ability than an anxious one.
That's the entire philosophy behind how we build our materials — short, calm exposure to the right kinds of reasoning, never frantic drilling. If you want to see what that looks like, our Practice Lab is free, and our guide to practicing without anxiety walks through what the research actually supports.
Reasonwell Press is an independent publisher and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, MHS or Dr. Jack Naglieri. "NGAT" and "Naglieri" are the property of their respective owners. This article is general information for parents, not testing advice for any specific child or district.