The "gifted" system in US schools is broken, racist, and completely fixable

[Igel]

11. That's much of it.

But there's a lot more.

First, the GT label is to be reserved for a truly small number. That small number determines the characteristics. Instead, the label's been spread far and wide and includes many kids who aren't GT. They're just smart and high achievers. There's a difference, and when you see "28% are GT" you know you're looking at a bad, misguided set of criteria. Because it's political, in the sense that every kid rejected is a possible problem parent and administrators hate that. Moreover, the more GT kids, the higher many state rankings place the campus.

Second, the smaller class size, personal interaction with teachers, availability of choice in projects, all matter. They increase achievement all on their own. But there's more.

GT kids tend not to be classroom management disasters.

Just as the AP/pre-AP/level course system that many schools have effectively reinstitute tracking, so GT is part of that tracking system. It puts low-motivation, low-achieving students in one cohort and high-achieving/high-motivation students in another.

Studies show this is "bad," but the studies are usually skewed. Academics--what most of us understand to be "achievement"--is appended to social attitudes, appreciation of diversity, etc. But we're not done yet.

Turns out that the studies that did look primarily at academics and still returned results saying that high-achieving students benefited academically from helping lower-achieving students (a) didn't include classroom behavior issues and (b) split the kids into two groups. Split them into low, mid, and high-achieving students and the results differ. One group (the highest achieving, IIRC) distinctly *suffered* from ability mixing to the extent recommended. It was the middle group that benefited from mixing with high achievers and also benefited from mixing with low achievers. But the assumptions, contrarian research, and flaws in methodology are routinely ignored when social advocates apply the research to public (or private) schools. The desire to be agents of social change and save society is too strong to let accuracy and critical thinking survive.