One of the reasons I rejected the only "gifted" private school in my area when my son was entering K, is because what I was hearing from other parents was that it was really a school for rich parents who thought their kids were gifted.
The predominant system of neighborhood public schools also screens heavily for wealth. In our Massachusetts town, where there is little undeveloped land, when a parcel of land did become available and it became known that a real estate developer wanted to build an apartment complex there, the town
(1) calculated that the expected cost of educating the tenants' children would exceed the property tax paid on the apartment complex
(2) bought the land to be preserved as open space.
So our town effectively has a policy of keeping middle class people out. Most homes here cost in the upper 6 figures or more.
Massachusetts in general is a high cost-of-living state. Part of the success of our touted public schools is likely the pushing out of the non-affluent. If a private school screens for rich parents, it's behaving similarly to many towns in America.
