PRESIDENT Bush, in introducing the No Child Left Behind Act, correctly challenged school systems to address the fact that far too many American children aren't making it in schools.
It was a point well taken. American education is supposed to serve all students.
But now that the act has been around a while, unintended consequences have become evident. In focusing on the most imperiled students, schools are not paying as much attention to what very able students need.
Jay Mathews of the Washington Post explained in a recent column why he isn't satisfied with talk of closing "the achievement gap."
Gaps can be narrowed in a number of ways, he points out: "Low-income scores improve but high-income scores don't; low-income scores don't change but high-income scores drop; low-income scores drop but high-income scores drop even more.
"In each of those cases of gap-narrowing, something bad is happening."
Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution found that while the scores of low-performing students are up "significantly," the scores of the high performing "are either flat or not rising much."
Gaps "are narrowing because the gains of low-achieving students are outstripping those of high achievers by a factor of two or three to one," he said.
"The nation has a strong interest in developing the talents of its best students to their fullest to foster the kind of growth at the top end of the achievement distribution that has been occurring at the bottom end."
That rush you hear is the sound of hundreds of thousands of parents and teachers nodding their heads in agreement.
Classroom teachers are in for another tweaking of the system to accommodate the needs of high-performing students. That is every bit as needed as the honest look at low-performing students has been.
Alas. No rest for the weary.