This is in line with our family's personal experience in a gifted magnet program in a large urban district. The program started with G/T kids mostly grouped in homogenous classrooms, but over the years and under political pressure classrooms gradually became more heterogenous because "struggling students benefit when grouped with bright students."
At no point were my children offered accelerated instruction. They were given endless projects of dubious educational merit. They were taught to answer the "tricky" questions about main idea and inference on the state NCLB test. This passed for critical thinking, although, honestly, needing to teach critical thinking to gifted students seems redundant, at best.
When I begged for more complex work in Math, I was directed to IXL and Reasoning Minds. For acceleration in ELA, the Accelerated Reader program.
The school offered Name that Book, but my kids never participated because the books on the list were several levels below their reading level, even in 3rd grade, and they weren't interested.
It's really hard to show growth when the diagnostic tools they are using in classrooms tap out at certain levels. A second grade teacher told me specifically not to worry about a lack of growth with my older son because the diagnostic tool topped out at 3rd grade and he'd already hit the ceiling the previous year.
The one benefit, and I do believe this matters, is that there is a larger peer group of very bright-to-gifted students. Our school also had a band, which was fantastic.
But the classroom? Forget it. Elementary school was for having fun, making friends, and band.
We switched to a rigorous private for middle school and it was absolutely the right thing to do, for us and in our community, at least.
