Ours is a sort of mixed result.
Our local school district has had a gifted magnet for elementary school students for several years. We explored the option, but they were unwilling to make accommodations for Girlchild's other exceptionality. (Yes, I know legally they have to, but I wasn't terribly motivated to make her a test case for bucking the system.)
This year they opened a gifted middle school. We were assured that they were making an effort to embrace the quirky wonderfulness of a wide range of gifted middle schoolers, and tried it out. Girlchild lasted six weeks (the last two with daily panic attacks); Boychild is finishing the year but will be homeschooling again this summer.
I'm frustrated by the confusion this district has between "gifted" and "three hours of homework a night". Especially when you get into the higher ranges of giftedness, fifty identical algebra problems really isn't necessary to drive home the point. Nor is willingness to do endless reams of handouts a hallmark. Neither, in many cases, are stellar executive functioning skills. These are kids who-- even if they do the busywork-- forget it in the bassoon case or leave their thumb drive in the Lego box. Or they get in trouble for using the margins to create original character manga, or for arguing the validity of the social studies questions they were supposed to answer.
Not that I think this is appropriate behavior on the kids' part, either. But it seems like the system is set up to encourage missteps and acting out, and squash the traits that make these kids gifted in the first place.
The school board is more than happy to create programs and channels and wonderful shiny toys for kids in the brighter-than-the-average-bear range. But for kids who don't fit in the box precisely because of their giftedness? Fuggedaboudit.
And even that would be tolerable if they'd just go ahead and call it "pre-IB", rather than "gifted ed".
Anyway, what I take away from all this is that one-size-fits-all generally doesn't, and that not everything labeled "for gifted children" really is. Something I think we tend to forget in our excitement at finding a plan that claims it will work. For some kids, it does. Some kids are all about the competition and the goal of valedictorian, even if it means three hours of handouts. And some...are exceptions even among exceptions.
