lol! I'm not sure that I'd call it the masses either, but I have seen where what amounts to 15% of the kids being GT identified (what we have locally) being something that is actually much broader than the sheer # would sound at face value.
That's probably what you get when you are in a comparatively high socio-economic community -- if all the parents of your kids' classmates are doctors, lawyers and/or engineers there is indeed a strong possibility that more than half of them would reach the 1SD mark (which is what the 15%/85-th percentile is)? We get a lot of that around here...
Of course in such a context the normal classroom environment might be a correct fit for the 2SD child, who wouldn't be such an outlier -- pushing the gifted label up to 3SD from the norm?
OK, I'll stop
