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%):
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.
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.
Yes, I think aiming for the 99.9th percentile is a good target -- for reasonable-sized cities, that gives you a large enough segment to ensure that students have age peers, while being selective enough that the kids in the 99.99th percentile are likely to have at least some intellectual challenge.
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
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.