To answer your question about the risk: he goes to a public gifted school, and if I take him out I can't put him back.
A thousand people would kill to have our spot.
The school has actually been pretty supportive.
But it's really a terrible setting for my son.
Half the boys in the class have terrible problems.
It really serves girls better.

Our zoned school is terrible-- full of underperforming kids.

So there's a risk. But not one I care that much about right now.

Though the whole thing reminds me a little (or I'm afraid it does) of the time I gave up a full scholarship to a great university based on some weird anti-elitist communist things I had going on at the time. I hope I'm not foisting my own nihilism on my son.