Being in a classroom full of "the best and brightest" students may not help fringeones, according to new research that （1）popular theory. The study shows that studentsin a middle school gifted and( 2 )program perform no better on national tests than asimilar group of students who didn't3for the program.
    "This paper is part of a growing body of literature suggesting that just because youhave stronger( 4 )don't necessarily mean you are going to perform better," says Scott,associate professor of economics and education at Michigan State University.
    Gifted and talented programs have grown in（ 5）, with more than 3 millionstudents now enrolled nationwide.
    Using a 6 of more than 14,000 fifth-graders in an urban school district,researchers analyzed students' standardized test scores in math, science, reading, socialstudies and language arts.
    The study(7 )a group of children who qualified for a gifted and talented programby （8）. meeting a certain threshold based on past academic performance. Their testscores were compared to the students who just missed meeting the threshold--in otherwords, students who were very similar （9）. The marginal students in the gifted andtalented program showed no improvement in test scores over the non-qualifying studentsin any of the five subjects.
The study also looked at gifted and talented students who were picked in a lottery fora "magnet" program, which emphasizes a more（10）and specialized curriculum.
    The researchers compared test scores of the magnet students who won the lottery tothe gifted and talented students who lost the lottery and found no significant differencein four of the five subjects: math, reading, social studies and language arts. The magnetstudents did show improvement in science. 
A．academically    
B．barely   
C．contradicts  
D．intellectually  
E．intensive 
F．motivate 
G．objective 
H．peers 
I．popularity 
J．qualify 
K．sample 
L．socialization 
M．specimens 
N．talented 
O．targeted