>It can at least sound like a statement the school will invest more in some kids than others.
Schools already do this ever since No Child Left Behind. It's just in the opposite direction. Kids below the average get far far more money than the median student. Why not have gifted classes as well to support those who excel?
Gifted class don't just “support those who excel”, they support those who perform poorly and disrupt the class because they are not engaged because the mainstream coursework is targeted well below their capacity.
It also mitigates the way which this has gotten worse since NCLB and it's successor policies because schools strongly prefer not to advance students (pre-NCLB, this was an issue because of somewhat legitimate developmental/emotional concerns, but since NCLB and ratings based on the distribution of performance vs. grade level on standardized tests, preventing advancement is now also a way of juicing metrics.)
Of course both forms of special ed are blunt instruments to deal with not doing better by-student calibration across the board to students, incliding those in the wide middle of performance.
Because those kids who are below average will suck up way more state and federal money in the long run if left to their own devices than anyone will benefit because Gifted Greg got to take Linear Algebra in high school.
Schools already do this ever since No Child Left Behind. It's just in the opposite direction. Kids below the average get far far more money than the median student. Why not have gifted classes as well to support those who excel?