In this article, the author describes how difficult it is to know how critically literate her students are in the adult senior high school in which she is a teacher-librarian. She assumes that many would have gaps in their learning, including gaps in information and critical literacy skills, and that they were likely to approach all online…

A program was developed to identify gifted kindergarten students in Newark (New Jersey), through the use of a multiple entry screening and assessment procedure, and to provide enrichment for those children through training of their kindergarten through second-grade teachers in the "Young Thinker" problem-solving model. (JDD)

Students identified as gifted who also display one or more areas of disability remain under-identified both in special and gifted education programs. All too often school personnel do not have the resources necessary to make decisions about this unique group of students commonly called the twice-exceptional. The purpose of this article is to…

This article highlights the Talent Profile, a cumulative record that describes and visually synthesizes students' outstanding achievements from K-12 in any valued field of human activity in which children and adolescents are active. The profile highlights individual differences and offers a range of expectations/benchmarks for the high-end…

This paper describes procedures developed by Project Synergy, a federally funded project at Columbia University (New York) to identify economically disadvantaged, potentially gifted kindergarten students in urban schools. The procedures emphasize site-appropriate methods, observation, dynamic assessment, and the concept of best performance. It…

The Early Assessment for Exceptional Potential portfolio assessment model assesses children as exceptional learners, users, generators, and pursuers of knowledge. It is based on use of authentic learning opportunities; interaction of assessment, curriculum, and instruction; multiple criteria derived from multiple sources; and systematic teacher…

The Early Development Index (EDI) is a teacher-completed checklist, intended to be a population-level tool to measure children's readiness for school and to alert communities to potential developmental problems in children. In response to the increasing popularity of the EDI, this paper provides a critical and timely evaluation and identifies the…

The Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council developed a Volunteer Evaluation System. Its objective was to create a way to gain knowledge of volunteers' skills and place them in appropriate volunteer positions. A five-step system was created to collect information about volunteers at set intervals and pass it along to appropriate staff members. The…

The preliminary report--two-thirds of which consists of tabular data--describes an early identification system used in London, Ontario (Canada) for kindergarten and first grade high risk students, and provides some data bearing on the internal consistency and concurrent validity of the system. Simple descriptive summaries of some characteristics…

This article presents a psychometric model for estimating ability and item-selection strategies in self-adapted testing. In contrast to computer adaptive testing, in self-adapted testing the examinees are allowed to select the difficulty of the items. The item-selection strategy is defined as the distribution of difficulty conditional on the…

This article discusses the purpose of gifted program evaluation and identifies some of the pertinent issues involved in evaluating gifted programs. The gifted program delivered by the Peel District Board of Education in Ontario, Canada, is used to illustrate key evaluation considerations, including gifted identification procedures and gifted…

A relatively new performance-based assessment, the DISCOVER process, is presented in this review. The theoretical framework of the assessment is explained, followed by a delineation of the assessment process, checklist characteristics and development, and the tasks in the five different activities. Findings on assessment validity and reliability…

This article describes the Early Childhood Developmental Portfolios developed in Project Synergy at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. The portfolios document the growth of young children with reference to developmental theory in specific domains and are used to identify, place, and develop curriculum for potentially gifted,…

This article describes the gifted identification process of the Westport, Connecticut, school system. The process uses information obtained through six components: a referral form, student rating questionnaire, examples of classroom performance, parent assessment questionnaire, Otis-Lenon School Ability Tests, and performance-based assessment. (CR)

The American Indian Gifted and Talented Assessment Model has as its goal the appropriate, fair, and thorough assessment of gifted and talented Indian students. The model stresses the need to augment standardized instruments with measures that consider individual ability and needs. (CB)