The mission of the Anacortes School District’s Highly Capable program is to identify and serve the specific academic and social-emotional needs of a diverse community of learners.

Our vision is to empower students to take charge of their own learning, becoming problem-solvers and creators who contribute to their local and global communities through collaboration, critical thinking, and empathy.

We provide a continuum of services for the most highly capable students in grades K-12. Highly capable students are students who perform or show potential for performing at significantly advanced academic levels when compared with others of their age, experiences, or environments. Outstanding abilities are seen in students' general intellectual aptitudes, specific academic abilities, and creative productivity within a specific domain. Students selected for this program typically rank in the top one to five percent of students as measured on standardized assessments. Students who are highly capable may possess but are not limited to, these learning characteristics:

• Capacity to learn with unusual depth of understanding, to retain what has been learned, and to transfer learning to new situations;
• Capacity and willingness to deal with increasing levels of abstraction and complexity earlier than their chronological peers;
• Creative ability to make unusual connections among ideas and concepts;
• Ability to learn quickly in their area(s) of intellectual strength; and
• Capacity for intense concentration and/or focus

A multidisciplinary selection committee meets to select the most highly capable students in the district. The district uses multiple objective criteria for the identification of students. We develop a matrix of the multiple objectives for the identification process. During the identification process, we do not use student names.

• Meet the unique social, emotional, and academic needs of the most highly capable students within the Anacortes School District.
• Encourage the development of enriched and extended learning opportunities for qualifying students within the Anacortes School District.

March 2025, all second and fifth-grade students will participate in the CogAT (Cognitive Abilities Test) screener, which will help identify potential candidates for the full battery exam starting April 21.

Additionally, the referral window for the full CogAT test will open from March 10 - March 28. 

Referrals can be made by any adult familiar with the child

Highly Capable Referral Form    

Formulario de referencia de alto rendimiento en español 

Parents who refer their child for testing will receive an email notification about when their child will be tested.

For students referred by another adult, parents will receive an email requesting their permission to proceed with testing.

Once the testing schedule is finalized, it will be shared with schools and families.

After testing is completed, the Multidisciplinary Committee will review the results and make a decision. Parents will be notified in writing of their child's test scores and the committee's decision 

AMS Highly Capable Informational Meeting took place on March 28, 2024 from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm.  

Notes from this Information Session