system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Education in the US should be tailored to top performers and not bottom performers.

Note: This is mainly talking about grades seven through twelve.

Education in the US is too focused on teaching to the bottom and middle parts of the class. Teachers move too slow for the students who are actually competent, which leads to them getting distracted. This is something that happens all throughout school from introductory English classes to high school Calculus. In the US teachers also don't encourage competition which is beneficial for lower performing students who don't want other people to know how bad they are ,but hurts top performers who need competition to become better. There are too few programs for dedicated students to learn beyond the curriculum. This leads to greater differences between students in rural and urban areas, beacuse urban areas have greater access to advanced programs.

Top students are the most important, because they are the ones that will lead the country forward in almost every area. Lower level students who are unwilling to put in effort to reach the top are not motivated enough to accomplish important things.

One of the most important ways to help them lead the country even farther is to move at a faster pace for class. This means classes can be one or two terms instad of two or three or classes can cover more material. Covering more material means we can have classes like Calc BC instead of Calc AB or a physics AB 1 and 2. The shorter classes would allow students to get classes in a wider range of topics in all areas. This could be something like proof school for all areas where students can choose to learn about almost any subject in any field.

Competition is the greatest motivator. So a system that discourages competition by not giving incentives and information  leads to a lack of motivation. Some teachers in the US forbid students from sharing grades and provide no incentive for being the best in the class or school at something.  In several schools I have been to they try to encourage cooperation instead of competition, but this doesn't encourage you to push yourself to be better than the person woh is close to you and then them to push beyond you. Competition is a huge part of Asian schools which are the most succesful in the world. This view is one that wil require more convincing for me to change because I was brought up in a school where you would not share any kind of knowledge with the other students, because that would help your competition. The school led to extremely good results from mediocre people, beacuse you were encouraged to be the best.

The lack of advancd classes or groups is something that doesn't affect all of the US, but mainly rural areas. This leads people like me to have to drive 2+ hours to go learn more things so we can compete wit Urban students.  Not everyone's parents are willing to make that kind of a drive for their children so students out in the middle of nowhere do not have access to such great knowledge as Urban students.
gpt
I agree with your subject, but not at all with your implementation. Competition is unnecessary and counterproductive. It seems like you're mostly talking about STEM, so I'll focus on that too. 

Competition is incredibly rare in actual STEM work, whether it's in industry or academia. There's just no need for it. The problems people are now tackling are simply too complex, and no one really works on them as individuals. Work is always collaborative, so why should school be different? Working with other people is in itself a skill that can be improved and should be developed at an early age. Good learning is collaborative; classes usually only have one teacher, but when people cooperate, all your classmates can also serve as teachers, helping each other understand material and offering different ways of thinking about a topic. You might say this props up the lowest performers, but that's simply untrue. There's so much education required for a technical field that there's bound to be a stumbling block or two somewhere along the way. Almost everyone will struggle a bit with some part of their education, that doesn't mean they should be stopped. 

Moreover, competition encourages counterproductive behavior. It puts too much emphasis on certain metrics, which drives people to focus more on achieving those metrics rather than learning what those metrics are meant to assess. The most straightforward way you'll see this manifest is as cheating on exams. But if you ask anyone who's gone to med school, you'll hear stories of sabotage, like people deliberately telling their classmates wrong information to try to get them to fail and alter the curve. The people who wind up as doctors, engineers, etc should be the most capable and well suited. That doesn't happen if the selection criteria include how good you are at sabotage and how good you are at resisting it. These elements of competition hold people back from success. Why not just let people help each other learn and be motivated by curiosity, a love of learning, and a genuine passion for the topic?