A short article copied from the WSJ- thoughts?

Students admitted into the gifted and talented program in one large school district in the Southwest performed no better than similarly talented peers who didn�t get in, according to a new study.

The researchers looked at the academic performance of 2,600 students who, in fifth grade (as of 2007-2008), either barely qualified for the gifted program�or barely didn�t. The �gifted� students subsequently took more-difficult courses, usually in their neighborhood schools, while the students who missed the cutoff took standard-issue courses. Nevertheless, midway through seventh grade, the performance of the two groups on achievement tests was indistinguishable.

A second part of the study looked at 542 students who entered a lottery for two oversubscribed, even-more-elite magnet programs. (In this case, the students who failed to get in typically took gifted classes in their local schools.) By seventh grade, students in the magnet program were doing slightly better in science, but not in math, reading, language, or social studies.

The benefits of talented peers and more-demanding coursework, the authors said, may have been offset by the blow to self-esteem that comes with tougher competition and slightly lower grades, the authors said.

The study had no data that would shed light on the students� mindsets. But the grades of students admitted to the gifted programs were lower than those of their peers, as was their percentile rank. In the case of the magnet program, a student who was denied entrance and who got a grade of A-minus, in math, at his home school would likely get only a B in the magnet program.

�Is Gifted Education a Bright Idea? Assessing the Impact of Gifted and Talented Programs Substantially,� Sa A. Bui, Steven G. Craig and Scott A. Imberman, NBER Working Paper (May)

I read it here:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2...njBIYKUnyJWwbRq7iHeln&cmp=clp-edweek

One thing that surprised me was this:
The NBER researchers did not describe in detail the curriculum or specific services of the district�s gifted programs, but district officials reported that their gifted and talented programs focused on exposing students to more in-depth discussions of grade-level topics, known as an enrichment approach, rather than acceleration, or moving through existing material faster and adding new topics.

I think this is the article we discussed in another thread. If so, I dug into it pretty closely.

The school district set the cutoff for the gifted program at the 70th percentile. So the students near either side of the cutoff would have been average students. So they're comparing average students in a gifted program with average students not in a gifted program. Gifted ed is supposed to be for gifted students, and they failed to make the correct comparison, yet they're drawing a sweeping conclusion about gifted students from it.

If you put average students into classes designed for above-average or better students, it's no surprise (to me at least) that they won't get much benefit. The material is probably too hard or the pace is too fast.

Thanks Val and I hadn't followed the other thread too closely but caught up on it. In addition to the other things you pointed out, I think the fact that it's an enrichment but not an accelerated program makes a big difference.
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/102622/3.html

If the material were suddenly too hard or the pace too fast, I'd expect grades to suffer, not stay roughly equivalent. The study does seem to show waste , in my opinion, since I don't think it's unreasonable to expect proper mental stimulation of gifted kids to have a positive academic result, and I don't think GT dollars should be wasted on non-gifted kids either. I agree that the study obviously doesn't show that all gifted education is wasteful, though.