Assessing the Status of Information on Classroom Organizational Frameworks for Gifted Students

Policymakers must assess the status of information on which they base their decisions. This article presents a meta-analysis of studies of the effects of special, homogeneous classes versus regular, heterogeneous classes on achievement and nonachievement outcomes of gifted students. The principal findings indicated that the gifted students in special classes achieved more than their gifted counterparts in regular classes. There were no differences in measures of self-concept, but the gifted students in regular classes had more positive attitudes toward peers. The magnitude of the effects were questionable, however, because of the methodological weakness of matching procedures employed to define the students in special and regular classes. The effect sizes were influenced largely by the number of variables used to match the gifted students in the two classroom frameworks. Larger effect sizes were associated with studies that used few variables to match the students in the special and regular classes.