I;ve written about this before here. I have seen some things happen in my peer group that could look like "evening out." I run with a Waldorfy/hippie group that does not do early academics, to the point of discouraging it. Some of these children did not read until 8 and then were quickly reading Harry Potter. If you put those kids next to kids of high-powered professionals who've been hothousing a bit and were feeding their kids BOB books in K, and then all of sudden there they both are at 8 reading HP--well, does that look "they all even out in 3rd"? It can.
It's not what we're really talking about, though.
I think it is. Because statistically, teachers are going to see a lot more hothoused kids who level out than they are going to see 99.9% kids. I think that is where the underlying nature of the beast lies.
