Sorry - didn't mean to be offensive. I do recognize that my dds have a tremendous advantage having me available to assist them with work when needed. Even as gifted kids, per IQ etc., they likely wouldn't be performing as well if they didn't have the support at home. Is that pushing? I don't know.
What I am referring to are districts where, like the OP stated, half of the kids are ided as gifted. Come on. I don't care how upper middle class the community is, these schools don't have 50% of their kids in the top 2% of the population (or even the top 5%) unless is was a planned community of members from a high IQ society or something.
I don't think that NCLB has been beneficial to a lot of kids. Even typical bright, high achieving kids who aren't technically gifted may need more. So they, too, are now "gifted." That doesn't serve the gifted kids well b/c the gifted programming is now set to serve a lot of kids with wildly different needs.
Much like you originally said that schools full of MG kids wouldn't likely serve the needs of HG+ kids, GT programs full of kids with IQs in the avg-somewhat above avg range likely won't meet the needs of MG kids. That's truly what I see in our GT programs. A child with a composite ability score (CogAT, OLSAT, or IQ) in the 50th percentile can be identified as gifted if he is high achieving in any one area and/or has leadership abilities or the "behavioral characteristics" of giftedness.
