I suspect you may have been misled on Plomin's paper. You should check it out, particularly the section on "Heritability increases dramatically from infancy thr

I suspect you may have been misled on Plomin's paper. You should check it out, particularly the section on "Heritability increases dramatically from infancy through adulthood despite genetic stability". It's very readable. IQ has a weird characteristic in that heritability increases dramatically as we age. In youth the heritability of IQ ranges from upwards of 40%, but the really crazy thing is in adulthood that number skyrockets to values that recent research is showing may be north of 80%! So perhaps the goal ought not be to find young Einsteins, but 'old Einsteins'! In my opinion the reason for the success of 'gifted' programs is quite simple. In the US many children have little to no interest in actually learning. That leads to a poor environment for both teachers and the kids in the class that would like to learn. 'Gifted' programs help connect students who are interested in learning and teachers that would like to genuinely teach, instead of those just going through the motions for the paycheck. And that's going to lead to greater outcomes for everybody. Basically, education often devolves to the lowest common denominator, and in public classes that denominator tends to be very low. 'Gifted classes' don't really filter to amazing students, but instead get rid of the awful ones. [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105 https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105