I have to wonder about the implications past the test. It seems to me that either many more children could excel in gifted classrooms (in which case a solution is to change most of the classrooms/curriculum to the same one that is being used in these gifted classrooms/programs); or that, under this system, children who aren't gifted are negatively impacting children who are gifted by lowering the level of rigor in these gifted programs/classrooms. It seems to me that while it is possible to game a test, a child who isn't gifted shouldn't be able to keep up in a quality gifted program. If children who aren't gifted ARE keeping up, then:
It's not necessary to score above the 90th percentile in order to thrive with this level of instruction (since I think it can be safely assumed that without all that prep many of the students in those rooms would have scored at a lower level). Therefore, it would make sense to simply export the curriculum/staffing/approach and offer it to everyone. These gifted standards become the new grade level standards.
OR
The sense of what is possible for gifted children has been depressed by a flood of children into these classrooms who--absent the rigorous test prep--would not qualify for the programs. Instruction is often adjusted based on the response/outcomes for students, and if a majority of students in a classroom hit ceilings at certain paces/levels, then that will likely drive the expectations and plans for that classroom.
I'd like to see a foundation pay to deliver the same quality of test prep to the Head Start school that was mentioned, and maybe 1-2 other pre-schools as well. In the face of some hard evidence on the impact of test prep, it would be harder to justify continuing a system that discriminates--as this one seems to--based on socio-economic class.
