Portfolio Assessment: A Key to Identifying Hidden Talents and Empowering Teachers of Young Children

Early Assessment for Exceptional Potential of Young Minority and/or Economically Disadvantaged Students is a project which used portfolio assessment as a means of identifying and of developing instructional plans for children in kindergarten to third grade. The project assumed that there are universal identifiers of exceptional potential and that teachers could leam to recognize children with potential in their classrooms if they were provided with authentic examples (videotaped and written) of such behavior. Once identified, curriculum in those classrooms were adapted to meet the children's needs. The teachers expressed a sense of empowerment as a consequence of the project.