Point well taken. I would point out that Booker T. Washington in his book "Up From Slavery" mentioned the same sort of thing in re: education of the Negro [to use his term] in the second half of the 19th century.
While I don't have the direct quote in front of me, it ran something along the lines of how Negro youth, were being taught a form of education "both of them inconvenient and one of them dangerous". He said that since Negroes at that time earned their keep by unskilled, manual labor (waiters, washerwomen, etc.) education should focus on how to work better, more efficiently, more business-like, at those jobs so to advance them, i.e, go from a washerwoman to a micro-business owner who employees two other washerwomen; go from being a wait to being a headwaiter and perhaps even a matrie d'hotel.
However the "liberal arts" education that was being given the Negro youth -- handwriting, geography, science,Latin,etc. -- ended up both boring the youth (hence the high drop out rate)and causing in them a contempt for manual labor and the long, slow climb up the economic ladder.
One result of this was that a huge number of young Negro girls, esp. in big cities, turned to prostitution*. In exchange for "putting out" they got money, attention, and nice, flashy things: like feather boas, silk stocking, and dressed that sparkled when they walked. You know, the kind(s) of things they felt they deserved b/c they had had an education.
(* And youths in to crime)
>> I'd say he had a point, especially about educating the ineducable.
Now there's a real issue. The flip side of "no child left behind" is that all too often, "no child gets ahead".