El Introduction

When I taught four-year-olds in San Antonio, Texas, we had a cohesive teaching and sup-
port staff that thought about young children in similar ways. All of us welcomed the unique
opportunities and challenges of young children, with different abilities and life experiences,
entering our classrooms.
We were encouraged by our principal to give each four-year-old entering our school system an
evaluation screening. We would perform this screening during the first few days of school. The
purpose of this initial screening was to offer insight into each child's general readiness as well as
gross motor abilities and fine motor skills. We would ask children to do simple tasks and answer a
few basic questions. Then, we would evaluate the results. Some children did very well, but
others, like Jeremy, struggled. Here is a record of Jeremy's initial screening.

"What's your first name?" I asked.

"Tuka," he answered.
"What's your last name?" I asked.
"Tuka," Jeremy responded.

"Where do you live?"

"Here," he nodded.

I handed him ten 1-inch cubes and asked, "Can you make a tower?"
Jeremy began to cry.
"Can you count the blocks?"
Jeremy's tears bounced off the table.
"Can you draw a circle?" I asked while I handed Jeremy a pencil.
The pencil sat on the table as Jeremy sobbed.

The assessment was over. What is the point of an initial assessment screening like Jeremy's if
it creates this much misery for him and, frankly, for me?
Later that day, we had an informal staff meeting and talked about our experiences. It was a
similar day for all of us. Some children did well. Others did not. We realized that while assess-
ment had the potential to give us a lot of information about what each child could do, it came up
short. Why? Because some children needed more time to warm up to the process. Some

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4 Assessment—A Portfolio Approach