Yes. It is much, much easier to create equality in a horse race by handicapping the leaders than by getting the scrubs to run faster.
I don’t believe this is a concious goal, at least for the great majority of “education reformers,” but it is inevitably implicit in their goal of reducing inequality of outcome.
The true goal of education, IMO, is to help every single child reach his/her maximum potential. If that were possible, then every single child would fare better than under present conditions. But the gap between the top and bottom would also be much greater than now.
Has been since the days of Johann Gottlieb Fichte gaining control of the German education system after the Napoleonic wars.
The fact that so many Germans could be herded like sheep to follow Hitler can be directly attributed to Fichte's vision of what education should be about.