I'm familiar with finding nothing close to an academic/intellectual peer in
- a top-rated public school district,
- a popular nationwide online program,
- an expensive, exclusive regional private/independent school, or
- local summer programs.
While there was never a lack of social opportunities, invitations, or parties to attend, there was not the hoped-for comfort and closeness with these school friends due to intellectual and interest differences.
Closer academic/intellectual peers were found in college. Until age 15, best friends were gifted family and extended family members.
Why might a gifted child not find academic/intellectual peers before college?
- Levels of giftedness. There are fewer profoundly gifted kids, and more moderately gifted kids.
- Schools do not tend to match the program to the child, instead they tend to match the child to the program. For example, a school may have determined that "gifted math" will be math taught 1 year ahead, and may have identified students to fill that program. A gifted outlier, performing math 3 or 4 years ahead, does not "fit" into that program.
- Rather than group the gifted kids together, schools may divide the gifted kids among classrooms and describe this practice as "being fair to the teachers."-
A school may be involved in a research study which dictates the distribution of children in the control group and the experimental group.
- Where there are sufficient number of gifted outliers, schools may intentionally keep these kids apart, giving any of the following rationale:
-- concern that other kids might feel bad
-- fear of "competition" amongst the profoundly gifted
-- if placed together, these kids may soar and create excellence gaps as compared with rest of the kids in the classroom
-- it is "beyond the school's purview" to assist kids in finding academic/intellectual peers
-- cannot place similar-level children together due to "child privacy"... kids will know who else is at their level
-- it would be "elitist" to group these children together
-- some families are large donors to school fundraisers, building campaigns, foundations, etc, and may be offended if they learn there is a top group of students and their child is not in it; Donations may decrease. 
Your experience may be different, especially if your child's "quirks" are diagnosed as a learning disability, as this unlocks special education support, remediation, and accommodations in a public school. Some 2e children, parents of 2e children, and school systems bond over the second exceptionality.
You may wish to read the roundup on
Advocacy, including school fit, and choosing a school.
If a school indicates that having true peers is a superfluous request and an unrealistic expectation... here is information in favor of grouping students by readiness and ability:
- the type of learning experience described clearly and in detail in this
post, which links to a report from 1997, titled
What it Means to Teach Gifted Learners Well, by Carol Ann Tomlinson, Ed.D., University of Virginia.
Addresses teaching at a student's ability level... grouping with peers of similar readiness and ability is implied.-
http://www.casenex.com/casenet/pages/virtualLibrary/gridlock/groupmyths.html (archived on the WayBack Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20210511071601/http://www.casenex.com/casenet/pages/virtualLibrary/gridlock/groupmyths.html),
- web search on Gentry Total School Cluster Grouping TSCG,(one current link is:
http://nrcgt.uconn.edu/newsletters/spring964/)
-
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0034654316675417.Unfortunately, the buzzword "cluster grouping" may be used (mis-used) to mean one or more gifted kids within a particular classroom, somewhat isolated, not necessarily being taught at a higher level but rather being treated as somewhat auto-didactic (often due to schools buying into the myth that because they are gifted, they will be fine on their own).Ultimately, students need both:
-
an appropriate challenge -
academic/intellectual peers
