Elementary school teachers usually require a General Studies degree and Education classes, which presumably does not include Statistics, so when you start talking about standard deviations, their eyes glaze over. Maybe it helps by explaining that the PG kid is as different from the MG kid as the MG kid is from the norm.
I'd say that if a school wants to identify the top 10-15% as "gifted," for special services, as long as they're going to ability-group within that, and/or allow for self-pacing, I'm cool with that. But if they're going to just call it all one group and offer them the same curriculum, I'd say they need to get a clue.
