> we in the 21st century are more bound to the success of our weakest links

only because they can vote

> Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family

This is definitely not true for poorer gifted students:

- whose parents may not even know anything about the field that the student is interested in

- whose parents may see higher education as a waste of time or have other anti-intellectual views like a sizeable chunk of the US

- who may have ADHD (pretty likely actually) and need some kind of external structure to pursue something to the student's maximum potential

> Splitting gifted kids apart can warp them socially for life too

Gathering gifted kids together, instead of bunching them with lowest common denominators, can result in lifelong friendships. Out of 5 friends from high school that I'm still close with, 4 are in big tech and 1 is in a prestigious PhD program, we still try to gather a few times a year even though we've been out of high school for 10 years.

>only because they can vote

Domain specificity of "weak link"-hood, as well as the compounding of innocuous, sub-symptomatic "weak links":

Carpenter Tom is a hard-worker, great husband, and community leader. And he voted for an autocrat, against his explicit interests (benefits from ACA, benefits from undocumented immigrant labor, benefits from special-ed resources for his kids) because he dislikes keeping abreast of current events (poor reading speed) and made his decision based on a misunderstanding predicated by, essentially, a game of telephone across his personal network that warped facts about the candidates.

He's a "weak link" on the subject that counts - the matter of the vote - but otherwise an upstanding member of the community. You're going to disenfranchise him?

I sympathize with the rest of your comment. I do think it's a bit naive to think that these programs help even of a fraction of the poor kids they should be reaching. They seem to mostly be a way to section off semi-affluent kids in "lesser" schools (e.g., parents who can't move for work or family reasons).

> This is definitely not true for poorer gifted students:

I don't think that's as big of an issue because kids have access to teachers, libraries and the internet.

> Gathering gifted kids together, instead of bunching them with lowest common denominators, can result in lifelong friendships.

Kid's together creates the opportunity for friendships. Focusing too much on academics at a young age will miss key milestones for social development. It's particularly acute for high functioning autistic kids.

> This is definitely not true for poorer gifted students: - whose parents may not even know anything about the field that the student is interested in - whose parents may see higher education as a waste of time or have other anti-intellectual views like a sizeable chunk of the US

Why are you assuming that because the parents are poor they are automatically ignorant or anti-intellectual?