Highly capable screening, identification, and placement decisions must be based on consideration of criteria benchmarked on local norms, when appropriate. Local norms may not be used as more restrictive criteria than national norms at the same percentile and must never be used to limit the number of students identified for highly capable services.

One purpose of local norms is to help districts identify the strengths and potential of historically underrepresented students, and to interpret scores on standardized assessments that reduce test bias from lack of exposure to what is measured by the assessment instrument. Local norms should increase the number of students identified from historically underrepresented groups.

Local norms may be calculated based on an entire school district, an individual school building, an underrepresented demographic group such as low-income students, or multilingual students; a combination of these methods may be used. Local norms are not to be calculated for racial groups or gender. Local norms shall be used when appropriate for all standardized, objective data points when a sufficient local reference group is available.

[Statutory Authority: 2023 c 265, RCW 28A.185.010, and 28A.185.030. WSR 26-10-094, s 392-170-057, filed 5/6/26, effective 6/6/26.]