ABSTRACT
Many in the field of gitted education have suggested that new conceptions of gittedness and a new paradigm for identifying and selecting students will help low socioeconomic and minority students become more represented in gitted programs. This new paradigm identification would recognize the ditterent ways in which students display gittedness and would call for more varied and authentic assessments. Research literature on nontraditional assessment suggests that alternative assessment has its theoretical assumptions in the belief that abilities are malleable and developmental, in contrast to the conservative assumptions that view abilities as relatively stable. Performance assessments focus on challenging open-ended problems that require high-level thinking and problem solving, and put an emphasis on the process the student uses to come to an answer rather than on whether or not the student can quickly find the right answer.
