Research out of Duke University shows that a gifted curriculum has great benefits for students, even those students who aren’t originally identified as gifted.
The study placed 5,000 students across North Carolina into gifted programs, some of whom were not identified by educators as being gifted. Many of those students soon performed well-enough to be identified as gifted.
Sandy Darity is chair of the African and African-American studies department at Duke and says, "One of the exciting things about project Bright IDEA is the premise that you provide this high level instruction and curriculum to all the kids. And so in effect you eliminate what I describe as the internal segregation within schools in terms of what type of education kids get exposed to."
The study is an analysis of Project Bright IDEA. It focuses on teacher development and a Montessori-like curriculum.