I'm hundred percent agree with Mrs. Griggs on the word GT is overused or abused.  The 4th grade GT Math level (my daughter in) is supposed 1-2  grades higher.  It should focus into real-life problem solving of fraction, ratio, percentage as interest, discount, profit, tip, tax, commission.  Futhermore, direct and inverse variant, volume, measurement, proportion, signed numbers, coordinator system and order of operation.

It's totally disappointed that all she's practiced in the classroom so far is  solving Least Common Divisor with demoninator of 2 and 3, 2 and 4.  Students are bored of what they're taught and tested as if they were in second grade, so they don't have motivation any more.  In spite of being equipped with plain numeric strategy, they're exposed to Continental  Math, which requires their critical thinkings.  It is fairly imbalance!   
In Physical Science which requires lot of experiment and imagination, it's hard to expect students who are just taught numeric math to understand Science.
In Language Art,  students' reading and writing are heavily influenced by environment.  Most of teacher choose the way let students write freely.  As the results, fragment, run-on sentence, wrong verb tense, incoherent ideas, grammar and mispelling errors!!!  You name it! 

"The impact of holding these kids back is a national problem, we are not educating our most valuable resource for the nation's future scientists, engineers, etc.." 
Mrs. Griggs can't be more right about it.  It's likely the reason American jobs are shipped oversea to India and China.  Their fifth graders  are disciplined and study  tremendously diligently than our eighth grader.  Let count back how many holidays to celebrate from the beginning of school year of September until the end of February.  I believe school should invest money on learning to  reinforce "NCLB" policy, instead of either cramming the SOL test material or wasting time/energy for holidays.  We shouldn't alternate the tests _tools to measure the learning knowledge_ with knowledge itself, then later reward for that phony knowledge.  There will be no bright perpestive for our country if the young generation get into the habit of "work for the worst! " 

I strongly recommend GT elementary students should have specialized teachers for different major subjects.   Teachers can be rotated different classes, focusing on the particular subject more than running to catch up with the quantities of subjects daily.  Young students need time to warm up their thinking prior to concentration.  Around one-hour period is too short to relate the new learning data with previous lessons.   I vote gifted ones should be grouped together.  They can share knowledge, can compete to advance themselves, and learn team work spirit, so it'd be better to have specific acceleration than just repeat old lessons year after year.

To my viewpoint of learning method, everyday students should take notes, have summary/ outline for each subjects and bring home for review in prepared for next learning days.  Teacher should compose parent letter weekly as a milestone report.  This will serve as communication vehicle, parent can test their children's learning and also match it against FCPS curriculum to emphasize on essential concepts.