To say the overall achievement of a general education classroom improves when you add gifted kids isn't a huge shock. I want to know how the gifted population fares.
In fact, the research suggests this oft-repeated truism simply ain't true. Studies of tracking, streaming and grouping tend overall to suggest - shock - that kids learn best when grouped with learners at a similar level and need. When you remove a layer of higher-performing kids from a class, the next level tends to improve their results noticeably.
Sitting next to people for whom the task is notably easier does not inspire and motivate, it just depresses.
If you've ever watched the escalating anxiety level of a 2E kid in a classroom where all the other kids are finding a skill increasingly automatic and easy, but your kid is still working just as hard as ever, and so increasingly struggling to keep up as the class moves on.... well, same effect, I would imagine.
Teaching differently and using appropriate curricula to meet the specific needs of the learners is what ultimately seems to matter, in almost every study. In theory, you don't need to stream to do that: it's the content that matters, not the delivery mechanism. In practice, though, differentiating within a mixed class is rare, and has yet to be documented as happening in a substantial form that meets the requirements of differentiation's own proponents. Grouping of some form is the only practical way to put kids together with similar needs, so the teacher can spend their time addressing those needs.
Doesn't seem like rocket science, does it?
