OP here, thank you all for the great info.

No curve.

Many kids still get all A's. Some kids get more B's than they used to. My daughter reports that only a very few kids get a C (and then not likely more than one). For middle school magnet applications, test scores are still more important than grades. After test scores, interest in the magnet subject and recommendations are probably more determinative than grades, if you're talking about the difference between straight As and mixture of As and Bs. If an HGC student is getting Cs, then there's usually some other problem -- maybe the kid is really on the cusp of belonging in the program, but more likely the organization factor is overwhelming. Forgotten homework and half-ass classroom work because a kid is fooling around are more likely to torpedo a grade than bombing a test because the kid truly didn't understand.

My perspective on self-esteem -- I think it's better for them to experience having to work for a grade than to coast thru school with all A's and then hit a wall in high school or college when they finally have to begin making an effort. IMO, getting all As all the time isn't great for self-esteem in a different way.

My child actually did a little better at HCG in terms of grades -- I think he was more motivated to learn and engaged. He was half and half As and Bs at home school and almost all As, one or two Bs at HCG. Now at MS magnet he got five As and 2 Bs. The Bs were entirely due to not handing in homework.

There were some kids who didn't do as well and I know that was hard on them. They don't grade on the curve.

We were actually looking for some amount of grade dropping to show some room for improvement; however, my child still got all A's/O's at a HGC. I am assuming that they are not graded on a curve. Though, the same is true at neighborhood schools-lots of grade inflation. I am not worried about middle school magnets because the MS will know where the grades were received.

I'm wondering how much grading changes at the HGC. For example, since only the brightest of children get into these centers, I'm assuming that none of them have ever received a grade lower than an "O" or an "A" before on their report cards and that presumably they would never have received anything lower than that again on their report cards if they had stayed behind at the home elementary school. So my question is, do the HGCs grade on a curve? Do all the kids continue to receive straight As? Or do some children who would never have otherwise received Bs and Cs at their home school now receive them because of the grading/more challenging work at the HGC? And what does that do to their self-esteem? Not to mention their transcript when applying to the Middle School magnet programs.

I would love to hear about your experiences or impressions.