And, we do have evidence that we can identify high potential students early. Please look into Duke TIP and similar programs that involve administering the SAT to middle schoolers. High scorers are significantly more likely to earn advanced degrees and create intellectual property such as patents.
Duke's TIP program (and similar) don't limit themselves to just identification of gifted children.
> Duke has a long history of providing opportunities for talented middle and high school students to gain exposure to rigorous academic coursework and to communities of talented peers. Many of these opportunities were facilitated by Duke TIP, which was established in 1980 and provided valuable academic enrichment opportunities for several generations of pre-college students. Duke Youth Programs has also provided a range of engaging summer programs for more than 20 years. [1]
Again, that's not rigorously identifying gifted children so much as it is asserting that some children are gifted and then doing a lot of work to ensure that they get better advantages/opportunities than others. We don't have anything like enough evidence to claim that they are successful in their identification, or that the students would have achieved similarly on their own.
Gifted kids don't even need "better advantages" -- just either give them appropriate level material, or at least don't force them to do inappropriate material.
They used to let kids skip grades. Nothing "better" than anyone else, just the exact same thing earlier. Recognizing their actual abilities rather than declaring that their abilities are determined by age.
From what I understand, a big part of why this is discouraged now is because kids that are ready academically aren't necessarily ready socially - especially considering they'd be breaking into a new group.
Maybe question the idea of strict social segregation of children by age, social segregation of children by academic status, etc.
In all seriousness, why should this matter?
If a kid hypothetically couldn't handle a "gifted" workload were they to come from a bad family, that shouldn't stop them from being given opportunities.
Similarly, if a kid is failing academically because their parents mock their achievements, is that something the school can fix?
Either the kids can work at that higher level or they can't. I don't see the point of dragging down kids who could achieve more because others have bad home lives.
Well, that depends on who is being excluded and why. If the process is run by human selection, politics are inevitably involved. Assuming there is a positive net outcome for selected students, there is even more pressure to 'lobby' and 'influence' the decision.
Also, if the number of slots is small, but the cutoff isn't in line with percentiles of children in the population, there could potentially be more children on the cusp that aren't selected than those that were selected. This could mean that the assumed net positive effect of 'elevating' the small group is outweighed by a net negative effect of not elevating those on the edge, even though they were arbitrarily cut off.
Those are just a few reasons.