My lack of success in that math program was due to a "bad experience" (I chuckled a little at that phrasing). The fallout of which had social implications, made

My lack of success in that math program was due to a "bad experience" (I chuckled a little at that phrasing). The fallout of which had social implications, made me entirely disinterested (if not hostile?) to maths, and followed me for years. Point being, separating our classes had little to nil positive impact (for me) in the long run, and the decision of which class I was in failed to address the foundational problems with the class. The latter bit being the most important; in my case it was an abusive teacher with an anger problem, but there's also a good chance that nobody actually sucks at math but that we teach it from a perspective that only a subset of the population will ever relate to or meaningfully learn from. I guess what I'd like to see is some reproducible results showing that giving gifted kids their own course program and separating them from their cohorts actually has a long term benefit when compared to keeping them all together. Edit: To make what I'm saying a bit more clear: There's a ton of people in these threads assuming that not everybody is born with math skills (or variants of that attitude). That is exactly what these teachers thought and how different my life would've been had I agreed.