I agree with the others-- nothing in the field really meets my standards for "rigor" short of, say, Terman... and that has other issues associated with sampling and bias.
Anyway, at some point along the way, as I was reading here, at Hoagie's, at SENG (all of which I recommend, by the way); checking out everything on educational theory and giftedness that my local library had (I am especially fond of Miraca Gross and Ellen Winner there, and obviously am very grateful to the Davidsons for their book), I realized what Zen Scanner has alluded to above:
what the RESEARCH says is population/sample based. HG+ kids are all singularities in terms of their overall educational needs. This means that we, as her parents, have the greatest degree of insight into what she needs and what will be good/bad/neutral for her.
Therefore, I changed strategies-- I began learning about different educational philosophies, about NT development, and how the development of GT children differs from that NT trajectory (it does, and the evidence THERE is far more robust), and about the unique problems that seem to plague HG+ people who have personality quirks in common with my DD.
That taught me what I should spend my time/energy on. Of course, the other component to that is that I don't fix what ISN'T broken-- I worry about problems we DO seem to have, and not so much about those that we don't.
