Unfortunately, our systems must reflect the fact that our "reluctance" to provide truly equal opportunity in early learning and grade school precludes any claim to meritocracy. We have hobbled ourselves, but not in the way you seem to be imagining: saddled with poverty and anxiety, history and double consciousness, our Harrison Bergerons don't trouble the children of parents terrified of a truly level playing field.

I do agree that we should change that.

Don't forget genetics.

To have true equality we will need to bring genetic engineering to the masses. Human genetic augmentation seems criminally underfunded and over-restricted to me.

Everyone wants to not forget genetics. No one wants to admit the inadequacy of their models of heritability of cognitive function in explaining disparities in educational outcome. Should we continue to judge the entire country solely on studies that claim 60-70% genetic influence (on cohorts of exceedingly similar European-descended subjects)? Twin studies that fail to consider epigenetic influence, widespread psychological effects, etc.? Studies that cannot take into account disparities in environmental effects, because they were unknown or exceedingly difficult to quantify?

If we find that there are significant, genetically-controlled disparities, how do you suppose we go about treatment? We can't even treat SNP-based disorders yet. Cognitive function is controlled by the complex interaction of multiple genes.

I'm sorry for the cynical response. I'm just annoyed that this approach seems to come up constantly, despite the problem being unproven and the solution not efficacious. As a society, provide people with safe, stable homes and communities, their children with equal education and development-centered nutrition and activity, and keep going for a generation or two while we increase our sophistication with genetic and heritability science. Then we can talk about where differences may lie and how, if at all, to treat them.

Obviously heritability figures are time-and-place specific and safe and stable homes (with good nutrition) are vital for success.

But even if the IQ (yes, I can hear the collective groan, but keep reading) difference between a Nigerian and a South Korean is 0% genetic, the within-group differences are still a good 20 points, half of which a genetic engineering program might be able to fix.

We're a long way from being able to do this admittedly, which is why funding and less restrictions would help, but I believe the QALY gains from success would be huge.

Btw: If it does turn out that womb environment is the killer app, the government should try and encourage a massive surrogacy campaign (allowing payment if it doesn't already).

When I was in elementary school probably a decade ago we all had to take a math placement test (not the standardized test, a different one) to determine what math class we'd be in middle school.

Tons of privilege-this and that (this is normal in the bay area, pretty sure a lot more schools have similar systems) but at the end of the day kids (like me) studied extremely hard for these placement tests.

I'm honestly surprised that people have begun studying for that test; when I took it was fairly low-stress…

At my school in England, once or twice a year the best/worst students in each class were swapped with the class above/below, based on the teachers' decisions. I had this for maths and French.

I completely messed up a French test on purpose, so the teacher had an excuse to put me in the class below. We really didn't like each other, and I did much better being in the top 25% of the middle class, rather than the bottom 25% of the top class.

British teachers call splitting up a year by ability for all subjects "streaming", and just for some classes "setting", and searching with both terms shows there's plenty of debate on the merits of each (or neither) method at all ages. Since I left the UK, it looks like politicians have been trying to get involved.

Yeah maybe it was just me but I was predicting what the day would be, how many questions, difficulty, etc.

Ended up failing the elementary school test and was 1 out of 4 in the district who aced the middle school placement test to skip prealgebra (math 6 to algebra directly). Much of this can't be done nowadays because of common core.

By the time I went through precalc and calc at MV I realized maybe I should've taken a slower math sequence XD

It did during World War II and all the physics professors I've met who went through that program were maladjusted, even for physics professors.