Yes I think it is important that students are exposed to differing viewpoints and levels of achievement on a regular basis. I also believe all students should be challenged up to their potential.

Removing the opportunity for the gifted students to learn how to cooperate with their less gifted peers does everyone a disservice, especially when as the future leaders those gifted students will have to know how to work with (and elevate) everyone, regardless of academic achievement. With this in mind segregated schools do a disservice to everyone involved.

I am not advocating a system where everyone is stuck in an introductory level class forever but I also don't think the opposite extreme is the solution.

It could take the form of encouraging gifted students to become tutors or changing curriculum requirements so that gifted students can progress ahead of their peers but without leaving the same classroom.

I don't have the answers but I don't think segregation is the solution.

> Yes I think it is important that students are exposed to differing viewpoints and levels of achievement on a regular basis. I also believe all students should be challenged up to their potential.

Here we have the core of it. These two goals are in conflict. This is because the time in which to advance both of them is limited. The same is true of the resources to advance both of them.

You're not advocating a system in which everyone is stuck in an introductory class forever. You're instead describing a system in which gifted students cannot be challenged to their full capacity because they need to be on hand to help raise up their less gifted peers in order to become better leaders.

Trying to teach students of all abilities from the same material in the same classroom at the same time comes with... difficulties.

* The inconsistency in level and material is a significant source of work for the teacher.

* Instructional time is limited, with the side-effect being that all students get less time than they would benefit from as the teacher spends time on the diverse and distinct requirements in their classrooms.

* Encouraging gifted students to progress ahead of their less gifted peers inevitably means they are not ideally placed to aid in elevating their less gifted peers. Incidentally, this model is usually called benign neglect. The gap will tend to grow as time passes, until a gifted student is doing calculus at an age where their less gifted peers are starting to learn algebra.

* Asking gifted students to spend time elevating and raising up their less gifted peers takes away from time they might prefer to use advancing their own studies.

Thank you for coming out and saying you think gifted students should become tutors. I suspect you've been playing with that idea internally for this whole discussion.

Have you perhaps considered that not having the answers may mean just that? It's perhaps possible that known approaches could not be rejected out-of-hand, especially when one has no answers to offer. Consider, if you will, that most institutions of higher learning essentially function through de facto segregation.