My DS's school last year identified 20 GT kids in a class of slightly less than 100. Then they take 6 or 7 of them and put them in each into 3 GT cluster rooms. I asked, can't you just put them all in one room since you have so many. Our cutoff is supposed to be 98th percentile. No one seems to see the statistical anomaly in that.
I find it important too, Cricket2, first because it would be impossible to get my 99.9%+ kid's needs met in that environment but also because I feel that the district does a disservice to kids/parents when it does this. These kids are bright, but to id some of them as gifted is a stretch and I wonder what it does down the road to those kids who were "gifted" as children but are not really gifted. Plus, there are a whole lot of social emotional issues that come along with being gifted that a program that lumps the top 20% together cannot begin to address.
