I wasn't offended at all by the article. I think that the teachers run into many parents with well-prepared children who do try to say that high achievement should equal giftedness. There are kids out there who don't demonstrate exceptional achievement before K who are gifted, and those kids may catch up by third grade because they learn quickly. Others may have been extremely well prepared, and once they are learning the same things as others, may not stay ahead.
I also understand how the differences may not be apparent in K. One of my twins has been reading since age 3, and the other learned to read the summer before K. They are both in first grade , and can read at about a third grade level for fiction, but prefer shorter books with pictures. They read higher level non-fiction books, and prefer those because they can learn from them.
The twin who has been reading longest learned quickly and progressed rapidly, but the speed with which his brother has caught up was shocking to us. The twin who has been reading longest does improve each year (and continues to be ahead of his peers) but his brother makes giants leaps in ability during the school year and has shocked me a couple of times this year when I asked him to read a non-school provided book (as the books provided by the school are at a low level). Just last weekend, for example, we were shocked when he wanted to read a page out of the book that his brother had been reading with me (which was at least middle school level) and he read it fluently. He couldn't have read it in December, but apparently made another huge leap in reading ability over the winter break. He probably appears more "gifted" to his teacher than his brother does to his teacher because of his pace of progression, but they both are HG. (Now he has hit the same "wall" as his brother - we have learned the hard way that the school isn't going to let them move more than one grade level ahead in "official" reading levels.)
