For the most part, teachers should be striving towards equal outcomes. In that they want all of their students to equally master the class curriculum.
Because your post specified educational levels other than college, I will share the following -
... recent research from Johns Hopkins University... The study’s authors estimate that 20 to 40 percent of elementary and middle school students perform at least one grade level above their current grade in reading and 11 to 30 percent score at least one grade level above in math.
For the 11 to 40 percent of students who have already mastered the class material and are performing at least one grade level above their current grade...
a goal of "equal outcomes" translates to no growth for these pupils, while the remainder of grade level cohort catches up.
In this age of "equal outcomes" many gifted pupils experience their growth being capped.
I'm not talking solely about advanced kids. I talking about education in general. Also, it's irrelevant that 20-40% of kids are performing above grade level (which is still a minority of the class). That doesn't change the goal of the teachers regarding educating their students.
That information is relevant to creating a broader range of classes for students to reflect the broad range of abilities or to the importance of acceleration but not to point I was making.
A school should have better class groupings so that advanced kids can take classes with similar level peers. Not that schools should raise the rigor of regular classes at the expense of the other students.
To the degree that teachers/schools/programs may be rated/ranked based on generating grades which report "equal outcomes" some pupils in a class may experience stagnant growth while other pupils in the same class may experience grade inflation.
This may occur at college/university levels where inbound, formative, and summative (outbound) assessments may be conducted.
That might true but it's not relevant to my point about the goal of the classroom
The problem is not "equal outcomes" but insufficient range of choices for different skill level students. It's stupid to expect a 5th grade math class to teach 7th grade math just because a minority percentage of the students can handle it. Those students should be allowed to attend the 7th grade math class instead of forcing the the kids who can only manage 5th grade math to struggle with concepts beyond them.
Seeing the goal of grades which report "equal outcomes" as being flawed is NOT the same as striving to fail kids. Some may say that an appropriate goal for grades is to provide honest and meaningful feedback on a student's grasp of the material.
Sure, the goal of grades is to provide meaningful feedback on a student's grasp of the material, i.e. the curriculum. And the teachers' goal is to ensure that all students fully grasp the material, i.e. the curriculum. Teachers want "equal outcomes" because it means that all of the students have learned the material.
Your concern about equal outcomes seems predicated on the idea that teachers should not want all of their 5th graders to grasp the 5th grade curriculum solely because there are some kids who are capable of grasping more.
The students capable of more should move on to classrooms delivering more instead of assigning a negative framework to teachers doing what teachers are supposed to do - helping all students master the curriculum for that class.
Some may say the classroom's goal should be one term's growth for each pupil and/or an honest measurement of growth for that pupil throughout the term.
Most would say that the classroom's goal is to impart the curriculum to the class. When the student has mastered the curriculum the student should move to a different classroom.
It seems more like a sense of misunderstanding between a class curriculum and private instruction. A classroom should have a curriculum, students should learn the curriculum. Teachers should make sure that all students learn the same curriculum - your "equal outcomes". When the student has finished the curriculum, the student should change to a new curriculum. The teacher should not stop focusing on teaching the curriculum to the other students who still need to finish it.
We all have gifted kids, I assume. I don't expect the school to stop teaching the other kids basic math just because my kid is beyond the material. Nor do I expect the classroom to roll at my kid's level because then no one else would learn anything. I expect the school to find a way to accommodate my kid without sacrificing its responsibility to the other students - which is to make sure that all of the kids equally master the core curriculum, the necessary "equal outcome".
But that's my take. I think the education of all the kids is equally important and you don't denigrate teaching the masses just because of the existence of outliers. You find a way to accommodate the outlier.
You are, of course, entitled to view it differently.
