Helping Some Students May Harm High Achievers

palegray.net writes "According to a new study performed by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, increased emphasis on helping students with a history of lower academic achievement results in lower performance for high achievers. This trend appears to be related to the No Child Left Behind Act. Essentially, programs designed to devote a large number of resources to assisting students who are deemed to be 'significantly behind' leave little room for encouraging continued academic growth for higher-performing students."

Comments

This makes the wrong assumption...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that the point of public education is to, well, educate. The point of public education has always been to provide a babysitting service so that both parents could have jobs and contribute to the economy. The point of NCLB is simply to keep the worst students in school, instead of having them dealing crack / meth on the streets. And school is substantially cheaper than keeping them in a (literal) prison. The aristocracy doesn't want the bright kids in public schools to excel because then those kids will compete with the aristocrats' own kids who are safely being groomed in private schools. I think this is wrong: I think the aristocracy (and everyone else) would ultimately benefit from investing money in genuinely educating more of the population. E.g., the original G.I.Bill seems to have helped spur the economic growth of the U.S. after WWII. But I can't afford to convince any Congresscritters that I'm right....