Not only is focusing on the hard cases more equitable, it may well be a better bang-for-the-buck.  The gifted kids are generally going to turn out okay regardless, while the hard cases likely won't (otherwise they wouldn't be hard cases).  By focussing resources on the hard cases we maximize the number of okay-outcome kids.

Matthew,
I find most distinctions, especially as related to intelligence, as downright corny and boring. Some of the worst decisions have been rendered by the ones who have been led to believe that they have superiour intelligence., as they are often the ones who have cubicled up the bureacracy/management or patronaged their way to a 'top' position. There are only so many asses that one can lick, before getting nausea. 
As you can see I'm a little hornery today. Well I'll get over it by 1 pm or so. I think this is because I'm bored. 

History can be more easily self taught, enginerring -- not so much!  I think engineering can be self taught as well as can all subject matters as being self taught comes largely from great self motivation.  Whatever challenges are encountered while teaching yourself can be overcome in some manner. 

What I think is also important in some manner is the development the brain goes through while young when it is challenged in different ways.  The more attention that is payed to these kids, the better off these kids will be.  Certainly they'll have a better shot at earning a decent living as an adult, but for these kids the thought shouldn't be preparing them to survive in the real world, but to help them reach their potential which for some individuals might be very high.

If you want to optimize a system, any system, you have to define what you're optimizing it for. Presumably, the point  of public education in this country is to increase everyone's quality of life, by ensuring that people can make a living, maybe even find somewhat fulfilling jobs, and that there are lot's of folks to take jobs in the economy. If you disagree with me about this, fine, but Matt should at least define his goals.

At least arguably, if we underproduce high performers by short-changing them on the education (including guidance counselling, etc.), then we are diminishing everybody's quality  of life because these folks aren't going to go out there and do the wonderful things that create jobs by starting businesses, etc.

I'm NOT saying this trumps education for students who lag academically, just that you have to balance the two. Yglesias ignores it altogether. Annoying. 

It's not so much that a kid knows more-but that he may be able to configure the information in novel ways. That to me constitutes 'genius', if I were to indulge in the use of the term. I think that too many people, characterized as gifted, get stuck in repeating to others that they are so. And people try to exploit them also, which is why they find themselves retreating from society. 

Matthew Ygelsias, most gifted children are born to rich parents who will see that they get an appropriate education.  Your policy of neglecting gifted children in public schools will make it harder for bright poor kids to compete while further distancing the elite from the public school system.  I don't see anything particularly progressive about this. 

Re: Most gifted children are born to rich parents who will see that they get an appropriate education. Your policy of neglecting gifted children in public schools will make it harder.....'==========I would say that all kids are gifted. I have not met any kid that I didn't feel that way about.

Interesting that similar if not identical concerns are being addressed in the piece in the NYT today on Bloomberg's education reforms. Note that they gave it an intro on Page A1:

In Middle Class, Signs of Anxiety on School Efforts

... " By SUSAN SAULNY In Middle Class, Signs ... By SUSAN SAULNY ...

December 27, 2005 -

Bloomberg's methods have made great strides in some of the worst schools; does not make for happy middle class so far. As much as I feel it is wrong and unhealthy for a community to ignore middle class concerns, I myself tend to give him benefit of the doubt...i.e., improving the permanent underclass situation should be the priority for a community, the rest follows if you've made some headway on that, then you're on your way to a bigger middle class. Without that, you've got all kinds of other, more serious problems than Johnny or Suzy Middle Class not get great college prep.

Gifted children do not automatically turn out all right.  The great enemy of gifted children is boredom.  Once boredom hits, it becomes very difficult to get their attention back.  And the programs that raise average test scores are almost tailor made for producing boredom.  Bright children are as out of place in the average classroom as are slow children.

"Matthew Yglesias, most gifted children are born to rich parents who will see that they get an appropriate education...."

I would dispute this.  Most rich parents push their children hard from an early age.  But their children are not necessarily more 'gifted' than middle class kids, or even kids of the poor.  It all depends on the circumstances. 

 Had my father's father had access to a program for 'gifted children', it's likely that he would have ended up as a high achiever.  Instead, his education stifled, he ended up in a coal mine, leaving achievement to his children (and grandchildren). 

Matthew, I am glad to see so many people taking you to task for your claim that gifted children are easier to teach.  Such a statement belies a lack of experience in the field of education.  Gifted children present difficulties because often they are smarter than their teachers, which leads to a lack of interest in their studies and underachievement.   And then there are the potential emotional problems, depression, etc. 

Back to the original point: most of the people I know in the field of science, who would probably have been described as 'gifted' at some point, are not rich and never have been rich.  At least half came through the public school system.  Many have taken advantage of programs like Advanced Placement.   To say to such people "You're smart, so we don't need to pay attention to you" wastes a potential resource. 

Re: concentrating on hard cases risks rewarding bad behaviour as in the (apocryphal?) progressive London school where after one kid hit another with a brick the attacker was showered with attention while the victim was ignored.----------------
Whoa! Competition sure can bring out some base behaviours. As an aside, competition over IQ & other test scores has resulted in some too. I would not have believed it. This is probably one of the reasons why I think it is perverse for kids to be told that they or others have high IQs because they become obsessesed with trying to outdo others. The quality of their work suffers. And they go to great lengths to keep abreast of what someone with very IQ is doing and reading. Fortunately, I have been spared of the knowledge of my score. I could care less if it was 110.  

Wow, is there any debate I get sicker of faster than the whole "gifted vs. non-gifted," "smart vs. stupid," "mainstream vs. segment," whatever.  I say phooey.

Speaking as one who has been identified as gifted an exceptional since early elementary school, I'm all for the premise of NCLB.  (The President's execution of it not so much.)  But set aside all the moral arguments and optimization theory.  Here's why it's a good idea to help the less "gifted" (whatever the hell that means):

When "gifted students get all the attention and help, it breeds resentment from other kids.  That means the "gifted" children get the snot beat out of them by "large" and "mean" children.  Sure, provide extra programs for the "gifted" students, but help everyone else just as much, in order to save them black eyes. 

Sorry, but it doesn't necessarily work out for the best. Our system needs to be much more flexible and attention needs to be paid to how children are doing in various subjects. I'm no genius but I did have one particular gift. Reading. I could already read quite well by the time I entered school. The only thing that 1st grade reading lessons did for me was bore me to tears. After they started giving us standardized tests the tests said that my reading level was 4 years ahead of the grade I was in and everything that derived from it was almost at the same level. The only thing that wasn't at that level was math. What did they do with this knowledge? Nothing. Not one extra thing to help me try and bring my math closer to my other skill levels. Maybe they thought that it didn't make any difference since I was at my grade level in math but wouldn't it have just made sense to do something a little different for someone who doesn't fit the mold? It would have made such a difference later in life.

I teach engineering at Ohio State University, and I see the consequences of America turning its back on its gifted kids every day. The grades in my classes (and those of my colleagues) typically fall into two groups: the kids who were educated in Catholic (and rarely, private) schools, and everyone else. Sadly, a lot of kids have been handicapped for life because they came from public schools where most of the resources go to the kids most at risk. This is understandable, but as a nation I think we're making choices that are already coming back to haunt us.
I spent yesterday evaluating applicants for our graduate program. Out of 15 applicants, five were from India, two were from Taiwan, and the remainder were from China. At Big Ten universities, the percentage of international students in graduate programs in science and engineering is typically over 80%. Our kids simply cannot compete at this level. When I read the apps from the Chinese students, it's clear that they've been engaged in activities like building robots and competing in science fairs since they were 10 or 12. How many gifted American kids get these kinds of opportunities?
Several years ago I had a very bright young African American woman in one of my classes who came from one of Cleveland's dysfunctional high schools. She told me that she never saw a Bunsen burner in operation until she came to Ohio State, because the school had no money for chemistry lab - instead of lab, her chemistry class did worksheets. In Ohio, at least, this is not a problem confined to the inner cities, either: the schools in the Appalachian third of Ohio are in equally bad shape. We very rarely see any students from the inner cities or from Appalachia in the college of engineering here.
The Republicans who run Ohio are quite comfortable with the situation as it is, because their kids typically go to private schools. I'm convinced our friends on the right see education as a zero sum game, so by disadvantaging other kids, they help their own. I fear that those of us on the left who only worry about the kids at the bottom of the pile ignore the fact that by doing so, we've driven a lot of parents (who are also voters) away from public schools, and into the arms of the right. When I see my own school district refusing to create more magnet schools focused around science and math, I'm just baffled....especially when they complain that they're losing their best students to charter schools.
Personally, I would love to see an honest open debate about education within the Democratic Party, but I don't expect it, because it would involve challenging some long-held, and much cherished notions of "equality". In truth, unless we once again take seriously the task of educating every child to their maximum potential, we're really endangering their future and our own. 
An uneducated populace is much easier to sway, as we saw in last year's election. The Republican assault on science and the ability to sway the voting public by fear are directly correlated to the level of education, and we ignore this simple fact at our peril.

I'm a parent of a gifted and a borderline gifted child, the latter also has a slight case of ADD.  They both attend a public school which is a magnet for gifted students while also providing traditional education for average and educationally disabled students.  I sympathize with my kids because I was gifted, too, understand that bright kids can become troublemakers or mentally drop out when not challenged or bored (been there, done that, hoo-boy).

What completely pisses me off about NCLB is that my kids are now spending nearly an entire month every year on mandatory NCLB test preparation.  These bright kids need more education -- whether gifted track or not -- not more down time, not more rote and repetition.  NCLB as it exists today basically decreased the amount every state has to fund actual education by demanding allocations of manhours on test preparation and documentation and reporting.  It also decreases the amount of actual education every single child gets out of the public system, regardless of whether they are gifted, challenged, average, period.

If my kids are spending one month a year on NCLB, they are going to lose ONE ENTIRE YEAR of education during their K-12 years to nothing but testing.

How will ANY of our children be able to compete with their counterparts globally if the emphasis of their entire education is also geared not to creativity or innovation or independent thought or skill development, but on TESTING???

Every one of my kids' teachers also confirms they are pressured into producing the same educational experience for every single child, so that they get exactly the same results.  How does this prepare our children for a diversity of challenges in the post-school working world?  How does this does this encourage the kind of diversity we need to produce high-quality products?  It takes a technical aptitude to make a working product, a creative aptitude to envision the product to begin with, math-financial aptitude to make a cost-effective and profitable product...how do we get all these different skillsets developed from a widget production mentality forced upon our children's educational system?

The worst part of this is seeing my children's frustration with weeks of mind-numbing test prep, knowing not only that they've lost a month of real learning, but that some child who is average -to-challenged could not have the benefit of the resources spent on testing my kids so that they could actually improve.  Very, very sad, and completely counterproductive approach to public education.

Unless, of course, the actual plan is Norquistian: drive people out of public schools until everyone homeschools and noone pays taxes for public schools.  I refuse to give in to Norquist's bathtub-drowning approach, though.  My kids will stay in public schools and I'll fill in the gap with extra material until we can be rid of this administration and its abortion called NCLB.

I haven't had time to read the other comments yet, so I don't know if I'm saying something that has already been said. Nevertheless, as a "gifted" student who has been in both gifted programs and normal programs, I feel that I have something to contribute.

The most important thing I have to say is that if you think gifted students are the easiest to teach, you are dead wrong. Gifted students are probably some of the hardest to teach. I don't think they even belong in the classroom with the other students.

Gifted students aren't like other students. That sounds elitest, but it's true. Gifted students want to be challenged dynamically, and the current public school system is not set up to do that. If gifted students aren't being thoroughly engaged by the material, they'll find something else to do. This "something else" will probably involve acting out in highly creative and disruptive ways.

Anyone who thinks gifted students will be able to "figure things out for themselves" and "turn out okay regardless" is, well, wrong. Gifted students are not only one of the greatest categories of underachievers (something like 20% of HS dropouts are gifted), but they also are, well, lacking in normal skills. To use me as an example: I can build a working robot, but I can't get the saran wrap off of my sandwich at lunch. I can do advanced maths (ooh, and win competitions, which is clearly a better benchmark than just being able to do the maths) but I can't add numbers in my head. Most gifted students I know have similar small hangups. In order to do even decently, we need to be surrounded by people who understand that while we may be better-than-average in some areas, we are woefully lacking in others.

Another problem with gifted students is our almost complete inability to understand multiple choice and true/false tests. There's almost ALWAYS an unlikely but possible exception that causes one or more answer(s) to be technically correct. I always got rather bad grades on multiples choice and true/false tests before I went to high school, where we actually had a day devoted to how we're supposed to figure out the answer that the question-askers want, rather than the one that is technically correct (since there may be more than one of those). Most students don't have to do that.

 Also, in my experience, gifted students are FAR more likely to have emotional disorders than other students. Almost all the students at my high school had ADD or ADHD, and most had some form or a combination of depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, and so on. One girl was narcoleptic, and that was interesting. I believe it was greatly beneficial to all of us to be thrown in together with other people with these issues, because it gave everyone a sort of "safe space" outside the psychiatrist/psychologist's office where we could talk about it, compare medications and coping strategies, etc. Of course, it was also good because if someone missed their meds and was behaving in a way which could be construed as "absolutely insane," no one really minded once we figured out they were just off the meds. "Normal" people would have reacted in a very, very different way.

Tracking, as a solution, is a good one. I was unofficially "tracked up" (it's illegal to do, evidently, so, you know) in a biology class freshman year and an english class junior year. In both cases, I tested out of the material at the beginning of the course and was given independent study projects for the remainder of the year. In both cases, it was only me and a handful of other students (the same ones each time, too) who were in this independent study. I think, also, in both cases it was to get us out of the teacher's hair, because we're all the sorts of students would spend large amounts of classtime arguing with the teacher about if The Stranger is really about nihilism, or if the first half was a case study of a sociopath and Camus just lost the plot in the second half, or if nihilism is a philosophical justification of sociopathic tendencies since the scientific one hadn't gotten around at that point in time. The result of having gifted students in with less-gifted or normal students is a LOT of lost class time.

 In my opinion, the best way to cater to everyone would be to have a mult-tiered tracking system, with a minimum of three tiers. Tier 1 would be for below-average students, Tier 2 would be for average students, and Tier 3 would be for above-average students. It would be ideal if each student was put in a tier level by subject rather than as a whole -- so if someone was really good at english and history they'd be Tier 3 in those subjects, and if they were decent at math, Tier 2 in that, but if they were dreadful in science they could be in Tier 1. This would also give kids a chance to move around, so if they were dreadful in science for a while, but then worked up and were consistently making excellent grades, they could move up to Tier 2 the next school year. The difference between tiers wouldn't be in the material that was learned, but rather the depth of the coverage, and the number of independent study projects, etc.

 Of course, I also think that a good (and less complicated) way to make the school system better would be to hire better teachers. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen until they start paying teachers more. I enjoy teaching, but I will never be a teacher, solely because I wouldn't earn enough for what I'd be having to do.