Okay, I have no statistical evidence to back up my gut feeling but what do you all think?
It seems to me that some classes appear to have a larger cluster of high abilities kids as well as a greater number of extreme outlier kids. I stated birth year but that is really a proxy for class year although with most state cut-offs, the kids in each class already straddle two birth years, not even accounting for accelerated and red-shirted kids. I have noticed that my kids who are incoming 10th graders (born in 2003) have a lot more high ability peers than the class ahead of them and that there are also more extreme outlier kids in their class than the class ahead of them. This has been true across three different schools located in different regions of our very large district as well as observations at various state competitions. That was one reason why I did not grade skipped DS in elementary. I notice this same phenomenon in other classes as well. For example, the incoming 12th graders (as a class) seem to surpass the seniors (as a class) who just graduated.
