[CrankyPants]

Not my experience. The gifted classes I attended were far better than the regular ones, and allowed me to study some JHS and HS-level material. The major failure in my education happened during that wasted period between elementary and college.

[timr]

There's a world of difference between "gifted" classes, and classes that cover more advanced material. You'll notice that I said I would prefer AP courses over gifted education -- there's real value to allowing all qualified students to take advanced coursework.

The situation gets messy when you try to segregate "gifted" kids into special education from a young age. Of the kids who ended up in AP courses with me high school, way less than half were pre-identified as "gifted" at the elementary and middle-school level. We're just not good at identifying intellectual potential in first graders.

[CrankyPants]

Sorry I wasn't clear. These were classes set aside for so-called "gifted" children. Not just classes that covered more advanced material. (Though they did.) Nearly everyone in there was really, really smart. I'm sure many kids fell through the cracks and weren't selected, but other than the odd inclusion of some musically gifted children who quickly fell behind and dropped out, we didn't really have any false positives.

That said, I totally agree that all students who can and are interested in advanced coursework ought to be able to benefit from it. I don't really understand why elementary school isn't more like college. If a 3rd-grade student reads at a 9th-grade level, but only does math at a 3rd-grade level, why compromise his experience?

And, as one who had teachers who couldn't always answer my questions, I don't really think asking one person to teach many types of subject matter is always a good idea, either.