I imagine that even in most gifted schools, there will be kids with a wide range of abilities. I enrolled my DS4 in a school that caters to gifted students, hoping that he'd find true intellecutal peers there, but although he loves the school and they're doing a great job of meet his needs, I'm realizing he's still way ahead of the other kids in his class in many ways, which has been a bit of a disappointment.
Also, because our school gives each student an individualized curriculum, I think there might actually be less competitiveness among the students than in other settings. Because it's all he knows, my son thinks it's perfectly normal for his teacher to work on consonant sounds with some kids and 4th grade spelling words with others. The fact that the school acknowledges the kids' differing abilities almost seems to normalize the differences and makes them less important than they would be if everyone were forced to walk in lock step with each other.
