Enough Already With All the Pesky Achievement Gap Talk - 0 views
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Jeff Bernstein on 19 Dec 11In today's Washington Post and then on Fordham's site here, Fordham's Mike Petrilli and AEI's Rick Hess write that we are "defining excellence down" by not sufficiently challenging high-achievers. They are concerned that the nation's focus-federal education efforts in particular-will "compromise opportunities for our highest-achieving students." Petrilli and Hess seem to think the federal government is wrong to force schools to have equitable numbers of poor kids in advanced classes because, let's be realistic, the "unseemly reality" that poor kids are way behind and can't hang in tough classes is just a fact. Putting them in tough classes isn't fair to anyone (including our kids who could really reach the moon if these other kids weren't dragging them down).