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My grandfather, Joseph Justman, was a statistician for the NYC Board of Ed for most of his career. His focus was gifted and talented programs. One of his studies was very interesting, but never fully implemented.

He did a/b studies of gifted and talented programs. For cohort A, the g&t kids were put in isolated classes with supplemental material. As expected, those g&t kids did better than not receiving supplemental material. The kids not in the g&t program performed the same.

Cohort B of g&t kids were left in the class with kids not classified as g&t. However, while they were in the same class, the teachers gave these g&t students extra assignments and work.

The g&t kids who remained in class with supplemental material did as well as the kids pulled into all exclusive g&t programs. The result that surprised people was that when g&t kids remained in a class, the entire class had better overall performance.