Talented and gifted classes, not much extra benefit

Talented and gifted classes don’t provide much extra benefit, say researchers - Quartz: "But the positive effects of talented and gifted programs may be overstated, according to a recent study in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Scott Imberman, Sa A. Bui, and Steven G. Craig analyzed the standardized test scores of more than 14,000 fifth-graders in an urban school district in the United States. They focused on students who just barely made the threshold for their schools’ gifted and talented programs—and those who just barely missed it. The goal was to compare how students of roughly the same abilities do when they’re in gifted classes with how they do in regular classes. If the gifted and talented programs are effective, then the marginal students should end up with higher test scores than the marginal students in regular classes. If they’re not effective, then both sets of students would have around the same scores. The researchers found that, after a year and a half of gifted and talented classes, the scores of the marginal students were about the same as those of the marginal students who’d taken regular classes. “There is essentially no difference,” said Imberman."

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