I don't see how the testing issues are anything but loosely related to Common Core. I'm not aware that anywhere in the CCSS it says that students must be evaluated with these tests; though having uniform standards makes it easier to engage in uniform testing, it is neither required, nor a new issue. The testing has been going on since NCLB.
Moreoever, I don't think the CCSS require any particular impact on gifted education. They simply show what children should have learned BY the end of a grade; not what they must learn IN that grade. This situation is no different then before the CCSS, when most states already had their own standards but nobody ever heard about them on the news. Districts having chosen to claim the CCSS requires them to squelch gifted education on account of the CCSS are either acting in ignorance or because they have a new excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway.
