The average, quiet, well-behaved child in public school is being cheated.

That statement might seem harsh. It might sound sensational. But it is not simplistic. It is a summary of what is happening in education offered not only by education experts, but also by teachers, principals, parents and students across Broward and Palm Beach counties.

In a country that has always prospered on the abilities of its huge and productive working class, it is the children of that class who are now being hurt by public education, they say.

"Our top kids are getting a good education. They make it through on natural ability and great parental support. But the middle group is getting lost," says Jeff Ruskin, an assistant principal at Forest Hills High School in West Palm Beach. "They are the ones who, with a little more help, could rise up. But the disruptive few and the special kids are taking all the teacher's time. I see these [average) kids and they could be doing so much more."

"There are parts of the school system that are very good," says Jack Vitek, an English teacher at Atlantic High in Delray Beach. "But what I'm seeing alarmingly is the move to a small, elite group of students that's well taught and is a delight to teachers. And then there's an enormous other group, like a proletariat _ and I wonder if they will even be able to hold a job when they get out."

It is not just the elite who pull attention from the average child. Special needs students, understandably, also demand extra consideration, but some parents are asking: At what cost?

"I see a lot of attention go to kids who are behavior problems, while the average children are being left to fend for themselves," says Angela Girtman, a Delray Beach mother with two children in high school and two in college. "If they're average and well-behaved, they can be totally ignored. That's what happened to my oldest son, so we pulled him out and put him in private school."

If the trend continues, we are flirting with calamity, says Marc S. Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. If we don't raise the academic standards of the "85 percent" of public school students instead of just the few, we are truly cheating most of our kids.

"The average kid you're describing is getting out of high school thinking he's positioned for the future, when in reality he is positioned for disaster," Tucker says.

This trend is rarely acknowledged but is not hard to understand.

It flourishes through a combination of problems instantly recognizable in South Florida's public schools:

* Large classes: In large, unwieldy classrooms, a teacher can't give attention to all her students, so she gives it to the bright ones, those who are a joy to teach and reward her in their learning.

Teachers also pay attention to the disruptive students for the overriding reason that they have to keep control.

And when those bright and disruptive are taken care of, who gets the scrap of time left over? What happens to the average, quiet students who simply get by?

"They're the shadow kids in my class that I don't have time to help," Vitek says. "They're quiet. They do what they need to. But I'll never uncover their potential, because I'm too busy keeping control."

Lesley Thomas, who graduated in June from South Plantation High School, considers herself one of those "shadow kids." She rarely missed class. She consistently did homework. She wasn't a disciplinary problem and, she says, she was rarely pushed.

"Teachers couldn't spend time with me because there are always those two kids in class causing trouble," says Thomas, who graduated with a middling 2.3 GPA on a four-point scale.

* Administrative policy: School districts pour money into programs to help physically and emotionally handicapped students. By law, they can't discriminate, and by moral ethic, you are judged by how you treat the most needy in society.

In the formula designed by the state of Florida, the average middle-school student without any special physical, psychological or emotional needs garners about $3,000 in funds.

But a special-needs child, depending on the handicap, can receive three or four or even six times that much to pay for aides, equipment and specially trained teachers.

Yet while special programs are needed to help these children, more and more they are being included in regular classrooms.

"You are hired to teach all the children in Palm Beach County so you teach everyone," says Joan Schaal, who taught a Hagen Road Elementary School class west of Boynton Beach last year in which half of the children were learning disabled.

"Some were emotionally handicapped. Some children couldn't read. They were all in my fifth-grade class."

The theory behind inclusion is to teach all students to learn together. Special-needs kids get exposure to average children, average kids get exposure to those different from themselves.

Schaal agrees with the theory, but says she was disappointed with the help the district gave her to deal with the "inclusion" students.

"When you have to do that work yourself, the rest of the class is being shortchanged," she said. When it comes to money, children with handicaps are not the only ones being treated differently.

School districts also pour money into programs for gifted students, because, they argue, you can't ignore their abilities.

Again, using the state's formula, a gifted middle school student might get $5,000 in funds compared with an average child's $3,000.

Are the disparities unfair?

Not necessarily. All children should get what they need to reach their potential. But when there's only so much money in the financing pot, which kids get less? The middle kids who, at an average cost, can get through.

* Parental apathy: Parents, like time-strapped teachers, can be lulled by their average and quiet kids.

In an era of two-worker and single-parent families, time is precious. If your child is doing all right and you're not getting troublesome reports from school, you can become apathetic. You don't push. You don't advocate, you don't get involved even if you know down deep that if you did, your child could do better than average.

In much of the public system, that indifference is a huge mistake.

"If a parent takes a laissez-faire attitude, the school system is worse than it was 10 years ago," warns Dave Florence, father of a fifth-grader and a high school freshman. "But if a parent is involved, there's more opportunity than there ever was."

Historically, this sorting out of students was not considered a bad thing.

In 1900, only 10 percent of American jobs required a college education, says Tucker, of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Even high school dropouts could earn a middle-class living by working the industrial assembly lines.

But jobs in the new millennium are going to require highly technical training, a college degree, or both.

We can't afford to concentrate on the top 10 percent anymore. Everyone, especially that huge "average" group, is going to have to improve, Tucker says.

"The logic is simple. Low-skill jobs can be done by anyone in the world. Why pay low-skilled workers an American minimum wage when those jobs can be done in Thailand or Sri Lanka for much less money?

"What we're left with are two choices. Have an elite class and transfer income from the wealthy to the unskilled _ and nobody wants to do that. Or, improve everyone's skills."

Tucker says the education system and the public's mandate is simple:

"What we need to do is decide on the high academic standards a 16-year-old needs to succeed, whether he is going to vocational school or college, and then make sure 85 percent of those 16-year-olds reach it.

"We need a whole nation of people like that. It ought to be an obligation."

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