But of course, there are some percentage who are not interested, so the game turns into dumbing down the education of the smarter kids so as to minimise the disparity that way. "No child left behind" is an attempt to raise the bar for all students. We'll see if it works or not.
You can count on the systems at the bottom (and the parents of the students at the bottom) to squawk the loudest, even though they are the ones who need help the most.
"No child left behind" is an attempt to raise the bar for all students. We'll see if it works or not. The problem is that it can only be accomplished by devoting a disproportionate amount of resources to the bottom 20% (who need a lot of individualized attention to make the minimum standards) at the cost of the above-average students (who can be expected to figure things out well enough to make the minimum standards without much assistance)
There are three main philosophies on resource allocation:
- Egalitarianism: Give the lowest achievers the most so the gap between low achievers and high-achievers is reduced
- Even division: Give everybody the same amount of attention
- Investment approach:Give the high-achievers the most resources, on the principle that the future payback to the nation from this investment will be greatest
The US's philosophy during the period of greatest growth and prosperity used to be #3. Somebody who grows up to start a company or make a technological breakthrough pays back the nation's investment in his education in short order, while spending $100K on educating somebody who never winds up making enough to pay significant taxes is a bad investment.