I would love to hear more! This is something that has occupied my thoughts this past year.
The obsession with testing and cutoff scores means that lots of students who could absolutely benefit from services are shut out because they had a bad day or don't test well or English isn't their first language or whatever. This makes the programs elitist. You can only gain entry if you score at a certain level on a certain day. It doesn't matter if you would benefit from the program and the program would benefit from your presence.
The only sorts of programs that are ethically defensible are those that provide students who gain entry into the program something that they need that would be inappropriate for students who do not gain entry. So providing enrichment to the identified cohort that all students would benefit from is not ethical. An example of this sort of enrichment might be art lessons or planting a garden. Denying enrichment to unidentified students who would benefit from it even if that enrichment isn't appropriate for all students is also not ethical. And example of this would be participation in weekly sessions using Beast Academy for math.
It is also unethical to claim to have a gifted program and then not provide services that address the core issue--which is that gifted students need advanced academics, both in terms of opportunities to move more quickly than age peers as well as to encounter content and questions that go beyond what is normally found in the regular curriculum. What's funny is that you can provide both of these things through a combination of acceleration and ability/interest grouping--neither of which require a special program.
