Agree fully. I was in G&T in elementary and middle school and the primary benefit imo was that I went into highschool with a circle of friends that were mostly

Agree fully. I was in G&T in elementary and middle school and the primary benefit imo was that I went into highschool with a circle of friends that were mostly high-achievers. Unless you plan on being a horrible overbearing helicopter parent, peer pressure is going to determine a lot more than you're expecting about what your kids like, do, strive for, etc. Despite being at a school that sent zero students to Stanford or Harvard or Cambridge, we had a pretty high upper bound on what you _could_ do if you were motivated. Competitive academic teams were the norm in many subjects (math, languages, history, civics...) Some of my middleschool friends split off to go to local magnet schools instead and looking at the spread, they didn't actually fair any better than the rest of us. Meanwhile, they mostly describe highschool as a miserable experience that made them vomit with stress instead of the excellent time that I had in public school with access to all the "public school stuff" like marching band, large theatre program involvement from the local community, etc. Maybe some of those things have since died, but I'd be surprised if the difference was enough to justify it.