School psychologists use a wide variety of cognitive or intellectual assessment tools to measure students' general and specific areas of functioning. Often, there are many acronyms and lots of jargon used to characterize the areas measured, which can be confusing not only for teachers but even for school psychologists. However, most of the widely-used children's intelligence tests are based on the same theory of intelligence, measuring many of the same basic concepts in slightly different ways.

Among the many theories of intelligence, the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory is the one driving the design of most intellectual assessment batteries. CHC theory states that there are a wide variety of broad and narrow cognitive abilities that contribute to an individual's general intelligence. This is a useful theory to apply when measuring a student's abilities to help determine the presence of a learning disability. Often, students who have a learning disability will have a significant pattern of strengths and weaknesses among the measured broad and narrow abilities

This website is intended to help educational personnel to better understand what is being measured by the various intelligence tests and how this information can help design effective instruction for a student's unique cognitive profile.