I don't think it's decades of atrophy. In 2014 the state simply got rid of the GATE requirement. Districts abandoned their programs in droves after that. It was much more binary than a decades-long decay.
I had gate identified kids before that and at that time, the gate identification was still working, but any actual programs had atrophied to one day supplemental activities once or twice a year. Maybe a decade before that, there were entire classes of gate identified kids being taught by full time teachers.
