It sounds like you want to just pay people to stay alive without helping them to gain the skills necessary to make that life worthwhile to themselves.
Before we try to be efficient we need to agree on what we are being efficient about.
The idea that we can push water uphill, and bring the most struggling students up above an ever-rising bar, is becoming a controversial one these days. There is a small but growing chorus of voices saying “enough already”, on both [1] sides [2] of the spectrum.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36319077-the-case-agains...
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51087394-the-cult-of-sma...
For the record, I did not even try to dehumanize. I just applied the language of technology adoption to adoption of knowledge. It seemed applicable.
https://ondigitalmarketing.com/learn/odm/foundations/5-custo...
I agree that words have meaning, but IMO we want to focus the narrative on people who may have been unfortunate through no fault of their own. We want to treat them with compassion and take the time to find the right words for them. Words that they might describe themselves with. ...But they might say "I'm dumb" and think nothing of it.
The goal is to remove friction from the path to policy change, because we desire an outcome of improved efficiency. We may have to be creative with language to do it.
We should definitely take care of them as a society built on solidarity, but we can be efficient about it too.