Yes, I do agree. Most school system’s gifted programs–if they have them at all–are completely inadequate. A few hours per week of pull out is disruptive and not an education, and some of the stuff they do in that time is frankly silly. I think the best solution may be a Montessori-style or differentiated classroom where the kids are basically self-paced in the early grades. And then allow exceptionally advanced kids into the classrooms of older kids as appropriate.
The problem is that in many schools it’s considered too politically incorrect to teach some kids above grade level, especially the younger they are. Somehow this magically becomes a non-issue around 7-8th grade when it’s finally acknowledged that some kids are ready for algebra and others aren’t and the idea of separating kids into different classrooms and teaching them at the level they are ready to learn at is now ok–generally unquestioned and uncontroversial. Unfortunately for the kids at the high end this is way too late–the differences were probably apparent in kindergarten but the usual kinds of testing they do simply measures whether the kid knows what they are supposed to know at the end of the year and ignores the fact that these kids already knew it at the beginning of the year and spent a year being “taught” things they already knew. The ceilings on these tests are often too low to measure progress. No one is taking responsibility for making sure they learn appropriately and despite our testing happy culture, no one is taking responsibility even for documenting the progress of these students because they aren’t being given appropriate assessments. Administrators pat themselves on the back when a kid gets a perfect test score but they don’t ask whether that kid could have gotten that perfect test score in the beginning of the year and whether the instruction was appropriate and whether the kid learned anything.