ABSTRACT
Before deciding which assessment approaches are best, authors need to make very sure that they know for what—that is, for whom—they are looking, why they are engaging in this enterprise in the first place, they submit that there are two major goals in identifying gifted students—and these are quite different purposes: targeting different students and requiring different approaches. Authors have no better way to identify such students than through traditional psychometric measures, because these measures are targeted specifically at assessing the level of their reasoning abilities and their attained academic skills—precisely those abilities and skills that make them "gifted" and in need of tailored intervention. The programs for which these measures are selection instruments should be created precisely to provide challenges to gifted students in the form of academic depth and advancement, rigor, pace, and emphasis on reasoning and innovation.
