I'm probably among the people who believes that, based on what I've seen locally and in my state, which has a fairly generous identification protocol, and nothing beyond it to differentiate, say, PG students from those who are the 92nd percentile.
Many administrators here genuinely believe (or have said to ME that they believe it, anyway) that there is "no real difference" between those two students.
While I agree that those students who are operating at a high level of achievement/performance among agemates deserve an appropriate education just as much as those who are HG+, I don't necessarily think that they have the SAME needs.
Personally, I think that is just as ridiculous as claiming that there is "no difference" among learning disabled children with low academic potential. There are clearly children that belong in mainstream classrooms, some who probably require pullouts for specialized instructional time, and those whose needs are best served in full-time programs.
MY ideal for gifted educational practices looks very much like Special Education. I'd be fine CALLING it that, come to think of it, because in my mind there really isn't any difference in terms of how "out of the box" education needs to be for a student in the 2nd percentile versus those in the 98th.
Ideally, both groups would get their needs met. Also ideally, neither group would be taking up so much time and energy from a frazzled classroom teacher who is trying to keep 30 children learning within their individual, proximal zones, either. Let's just be realistic-- it DOES make it far harder for a classroom teacher to have a 'spread' of abilities that ranges from 98th to 5th percentile. It's way more productive to have children placed in a classroom that spans one or two standard deviations in ability, which is why I am a huge fan of ability grouping and flexible tracking (maybe even by subject/skill).
