Volume 1 - Issue 1 - DBU Journal for K-12 Educational Leadership - Page 17

Journal for K-12 Educational Leadership 15 grouping have come from respected researchers in the field, such as Gagne (2007) who bid “educators to aim as much as possible for full-time grouping of gifted students” (p. 109). Gagne provided this call to arms only after the findings of earlier studies showed greater academic gains occurred with gifted students who were grouped homoge - neously. Full time homogeneous grouping of gifted students has generated academic achievement and growth. Gagne (2007) articulated that: It can be generalized from the research that full-time grouping is the only way to create appropriate condi - tions for an enriched curriculum. It answers a perma - nent problem with a full-time solution; it facilitates the enrichment of all subject matters in the regular curric - ulum and it does not require adding a teacher to the school’s personnel. (p. 111) Even the highest achievers in a homogeneously grouped classroom benefit from having to compete with one another (Kulik, 1992). In addition, when gifted high achievers are removed from the classroom environ- ment, general education low achievers benefit from not having to compete with their more able peers (Kulik, 1992). These early findings still remain rele - vant and mitigate the concern that low-achieving stu - dents are harmed academically when grouped with their academic peers (Brulles, Saunders, & Cohen, 2010). Swiatek (2001) showed that gifted students in like-ability classrooms had larger academic gains in a year than students who had classmates of varied academic ability. Goldring’s (1990) and Swiatek’s (2001) findings supported the conclu - sion that gifted students in like-ability classrooms achieve statistically significantly higher scores on state assessments than their gifted counterparts in heterogeneous cluster- Table 1. Delivery Models’ Strengths and Weaknesses