I have mixed feelings about the article. It clearly didn't present gifted children accurately. On the other hand, the initial quote was from someone who teaches at a school for the gifted and advanced. So I took the quote to mean "among the gifted, an early reader isn't necessarily more gifted than a gifted child that doesn't read early". Among that population, you can't pick the early readers from not by 4th grade. And as the parent of a HG+ child that didn't really read before kindergarten, but shocked us by the end of the year, I could say that is true. I've met families in the GT community with children my son's age that read at 2 or 3 who DS9 has caught up with or surpassed.
However, the non-GT community is going to read this wrong and think EVERY child will catch up and be on a level playing field at 4th grade, which is obviously NOT true. I think the GT school's comments are completely out of context. Generally the message is good - kids (GT or ND) don't necessarily need to read early to be successful. I don't think they needed to target GT kids to get this message across! Definitely worth a note to the author. Thanks for posting this!
