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08/18/2007: "Modern education fails gifted, overspends on failing slow kids"

Since well before the Bush Administration began using the impossibly sunny term "no child left behind," those who write education policy in the U.S. have worried most about kids at the bottom, stragglers of impoverished means or IQs. But surprisingly, gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids--about 5% of both populations leave school early. Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range. Earlier this year, Patrick Gonzales of the U.S. Department of Education presented a paper showing that the highest-achieving students in six other countries, including Japan, Hungary and Singapore, scored significantly higher in math than their bright U.S. counterparts, who scored about the same as the Estonians. Which all suggests we may be squandering a national resource: our best young minds.

[ Modernity in a nutshell: feel better about yourself by feeling sorry for others. And if anyone steps out of line and goes above the crowd, crush them -- they're dangerous. No wonder idiots rule. ]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653653,00.html