NOT every student is gifted, in the same way that not every student has special needs.

While calling every student gifted may be seen as many schools as "motivating," "equitizing," and creating a positive environment, it is almost always either a lack of knowledge about intellectual giftedness and its causes. Only around 2 to 5% students can be really, clinically considered gifted and these students have been proven to learn better and thrive both academically and socially in an environment built for them with peers of similar intellectual ability, and calling every student "gifted" undermines the needs of these students.

In many macronational schools, lack of understanding about this topic is because gifted students less visibly show their needs than students with intellectual disability or have other special needs. While both neurodivergent in the same amount on the IQ spectrum, these students are treated very differently: in fact, students who have intellectually disabled receive ten thousand times more funding than the gifted student in the United States, which is quite simply the pinnacle of unfairness.

Giftedness cannot be measured by a math or reading test. It doesn't mean a student will do well in school, those are "bright" or "talented" students, which are NOT synonyms for giftedness. Programs that put students with just material above grade level is not a true gifted program, although many genuine gifted programs do incorporate this.

What it means is that they think differently, interact differently, and have special needs, just like their counterparts on the other side of the intelligence spectrum. Effective learning happens when they are near fellow gifted students and they are in a way "too smart for their own good" on occasion: they need differentiated education, but unlike students with intellectual disabilities, they do not show it because they know that they have to suppress it in order to feel normal and accepted. There is ZERO reason to believe that there wouuld be a difference in funding.