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

[Egnever]

27. I don't see how these results are that surprising

Considering this

The threshold on the initial test was lowered slightly for disadvantaged “Plan B” students, who were either eligible for free or discounted lunches based on their family’s income, or were English leaners.

or this

all second-grade students took an ability test, and those who scored above a given threshold took an IQ test in order to qualify for a gifted-and-talented program.

Sounds like the bar was lowered for "disadvantaged" students at the same time as the testing became mandatory. I am not sure that lowering the requirements for some students is actually fixing anything. It seems more like an attempt to increase diversity for the sake of increasing diversity than an actual attempt to identify gifted students. The mandatory testing however instead of recommendations would remove bias and seems totally appropriate.

I also don't find the fact that the newly identified students benefited more surprising, considering the others were already taking those courses why would they show any significant improvement. The smaller class size alone would likely cause significant improvement for any student taken out of the larger classes, gifted or not.