I guess my question is, does the Talent Search still serve the purpose of identifying gifted students *if* those students haven't already been identified by parents and/or teachers and exposed to/prepped with much higher-level materials?
Talent search is about having both the talent and the exposure to higher level math. Certainly there are kids with less talent and more exposure (likely from prepping) who do well. Most likely the kids who did very well weren't "prepped", but have been accelerated several years in math because of their math talent.
The search will miss kids with lots of talent and little exposure to higher level math (whether from school/parents/self). They would not be "captured" with the current talent search testing.
