Dude's point is well-taken there. As long as we see this as a 'zero sum game' in which ANY resources directed at students in the 99th percentile are "diverted" from "those poor children" at the 1st percentile, this isn't going to change. At some point we need to step back and ask which is the better investment in the long run-- and admit that even if it IS a zero-sum game, maybe we're not calculating the opportunity costs correctly.
The problem is intertemporal discounting and the fact that political will exists on a 4 year cycle. There's no will politically to develop a coherent human capital investment strategy because revenue generating ability isn't linked one-to-one with voter head counts.
I agree that the opportunity costs aren't being fully considered--not even close. There is a large fiscal multiplier on disruptive innovation, the kind that is disproportionately in the hands of the most cognitively able. But it's easy to argue away because those gains will only be realized a generation or more away, while the cost of social assistance is more palatable and imminent.
There are perverse risk appetites at play. That society chooses time and again to bankroll the least able students tells me we're an excessively risk averse society when it comes to education. We don't trust today's most able students to provide a greater opportunity set in the future. Yet we continue to borrow heavily against the future assuming the next generation will pick up the tab absent disruptive innovations. It's lunacy.
I'd rather see the most assistance given where low economic privilege and high cognitive ability intersect. Nobody should be penalized because their parents are poor. Similarly, nobody should be doubly penalized for coming from an economically disadvantaged family and being cognitively well endowed in an unsupportive education system. Ironically, grade skipping is cheap. Go figure.
