Lexington is one town in particular that is filled with MIT/Harvard/high-tech/bio-tech folks. It's true that the kids there tend to be bright because of the skewed population. It's also true that there's a competitiveness in this town that you may not find elsewhere; I know Concord and Bedford, for instance are less competitive than Lexington. The other issue is that Lexington is quite expensive, though not as much as Weston which is the most expensive in the state and has the top school system in the state as well.

I will say that I love Lexington and especially the playground with a full bathroom by the high school. We were looking to buy there last year as well as other towns west of Boston. I kept drawing that circle over and over again. When I discovered that Lexington and Concord do not address giftedness, I began to question. One of the issues for us is that my son has a late birthday so he would not have been in kindergarten until this September despite the fact last October he was already reading and writing at the 2nd grade level and bouncing off the walls in an integrated, pre-k program.

Lexington is considered to have a better school system than Arlington. I think Boston Magazine ranked it 4th in the state this year.
See http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/best_schools_2010_the_rankings/
But Arlington's Brackett elementary school is higher rated than Lexington's elementary schools - based on the MCAS tests.

I spoke with a teacher at a Lexington school fair last spring. This teacher lived in Arlington and said that the kids in Lexington have access to more resources (i.e. extra help, music, arts), than many kids in the Arlington schools. Take this with a grain of salt though.

That said, I know some parents with gifted kids moved out of Lexington because the schools did not want to differentiate the curriculum for them. These parents banded with others in Winchester (another top school system) who were frustrated over the issues of giftedness to create the Anova school in Melrose.

West of Boston has some excellent school systems, but there are other areas of the state as well with equally excellent school systems (Hamilton-Wenham, Topsfield, and Hingham come to mind).

Visit the playgrounds and area and talk to other parents. You'll hear what I'm talking about. There's a perception within the state that you've got to get your kid into a school system like Lexington or Newton or else you've doomed your child to failure. I disagree with this perception, especially if you have a gifted kid.

Some of the school systems west of Boston are a bit obsessed with MCAS and testing. It looks good on paper to see the high test scores and it helps boost property values, but there is a flip side to the testing and hamster treadmill approach to education.

I'm just saying that there other factors to consider when looking at the various towns and school systems.

Sage School is located in Foxboro. It's expensive.