True, the top 0.01% is not going to work, but Los Angeles has a public school program that explicitly focuses on the top 0.1% (although recently they have round

True, the top 0.01% is not going to work, but Los Angeles has a public school program that explicitly focuses on the top 0.1% (although recently they have rounded out their admissions with those in the top 0.5%): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_Gifted_Magnet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_Gifted_Magnet I attended this program in elementary school and it seems to have spoiled me socially, since the students in the program were so much more interesting to me than other kids. I suspect the reason the school district chose to create the program is because of the notoriety of the Mirman School, a lauded K-8 private school which also has top-0.1% admissions requirements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mirman_School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mirman_School So at least in some areas, education tailored to the 99.9th percentile has a long track record. But sadly, I have no idea if the practices and knowledge of that experience are available to inform highly-gifted education in other parts of the world.