A short article copied from the WSJ- thoughts?
Students admitted into the gifted and talented program in one large school district in the Southwest performed no better than similarly talented peers who didn�t get in, according to a new study.
The researchers looked at the academic performance of 2,600 students who, in fifth grade (as of 2007-2008), either barely qualified for the gifted program�or barely didn�t. The �gifted� students subsequently took more-difficult courses, usually in their neighborhood schools, while the students who missed the cutoff took standard-issue courses. Nevertheless, midway through seventh grade, the performance of the two groups on achievement tests was indistinguishable.
A second part of the study looked at 542 students who entered a lottery for two oversubscribed, even-more-elite magnet programs. (In this case, the students who failed to get in typically took gifted classes in their local schools.) By seventh grade, students in the magnet program were doing slightly better in science, but not in math, reading, language, or social studies.
The benefits of talented peers and more-demanding coursework, the authors said, may have been offset by the blow to self-esteem that comes with tougher competition and slightly lower grades, the authors said.
The study had no data that would shed light on the students� mindsets. But the grades of students admitted to the gifted programs were lower than those of their peers, as was their percentile rank. In the case of the magnet program, a student who was denied entrance and who got a grade of A-minus, in math, at his home school would likely get only a B in the magnet program.
�Is Gifted Education a Bright Idea? Assessing the Impact of Gifted and Talented Programs Substantially,� Sa A. Bui, Steven G. Craig and Scott A. Imberman, NBER Working Paper (May)
