I was interested in this comment as well and would like to see the research it is based on. (Sorry--that sounds combative! I don't mean it as such. Genuinely curious.)
I would not be surprised if competitions offer good challenge and learning for gifted students who attend and study them...but I wonder what methods have the best success at recruiting and REACHING students? For instance, I feel pretty confident that DD is mildly/moderately gifted in math, but if she never comes to math club she won't experience ANY growth from math club, of course.
I am not anti-competition, because I think it's a great outlet for kids who are into that. But I wonder if it could be done sort of like how my kids' school does chess: there are the kids who compete and the the broader group of kids there for fun. The competition kids come to the big club, but also meet separately...and sometimes kids who didn't at first show promise develop it and get recruited for competition.
