I think the notion that gifted students drop out of high school as often as the general population is nonsense and contrary to common sense. According to the Bell Curve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve, among non-Hispanic whites, the drop-out rate was 0.4% for people with IQ between 110 and 125 and 0% above that.
The source of the myth may be the desire of some gifted advocates to heighten the urgency of serving the gifted -- "if we don't provided gifted programming, they'll drop out!" In reality, few gifted students drop out, although gifted programming would enable them to learn more in their K-12 years.
