In Florida, the gifted program schools are always smack dab in the middle of the hood. So they basically send the really smart kids to school with the hood rats in hope that through some sort of intellectual osmosis, the dumb kids will absorb some intelligence.

It's been experience from observing such social experiments, that it is usually the other way around. The smart kids usually try to fit in socially by acting like those they are surrounded by all day.

A smart, ambitious kid doesn't need a gifted program. They will be smart and ambitious anywhere they go.