> to turn one of those kids into someone worthwhile
The basic insight here is: kids with learning disabilities, or who have a home environment not conducive to learning, are worthwhile people. And school as the institution taking care of those kids should do more than just send them to another building to rot.
It's a very straightforward thing to want your upper middle class privileged kid get all the support they need to become a future surgeon, but school is just very bad at recognizing and enhancing the chances of people who aren't neurotypical white privileged background kids.
Enforcing standardized testing as a key KPI isn't really the right solution here, but there's enough examples outside of the US how this can be done better than just writing off people as "not worthwhile".
The basic insight here is: kids with learning disabilities, or who have a home environment not conducive to learning, are worthwhile people. And school as the institution taking care of those kids should do more than just send them to another building to rot.
It's a very straightforward thing to want your upper middle class privileged kid get all the support they need to become a future surgeon, but school is just very bad at recognizing and enhancing the chances of people who aren't neurotypical white privileged background kids.
Enforcing standardized testing as a key KPI isn't really the right solution here, but there's enough examples outside of the US how this can be done better than just writing off people as "not worthwhile".