I understand that its easy and important to pour resources into educating the already motivated. The justification is clear, they want to be there, they want to learn, they "deserve it".
Yet, unless I'm misreading your comment, it appears as if a majority of students in the worse schools appear to be in the "unmotivated" class. Heck, even in my middle/upper-middle class suburban high school, that same divide between the "honors" and the "regular" kids was there.
I think the bigger societal issue is finding some way to get this majority interested in learning. That would have a far larger impact than giving more to the already motivated (if only due to sheer numbers). I realize this is a HUGE issue to tackle and unfortunately, its something that I have no answers for.
Neither do I. I think it starts with group psychology: even among the non-honors students I knew quite a few who were working as hard as they could and wanted to learn. But in the larger group, they are put down because they're not doing what everyone else is doing, so the first problem is how to break the cycle of groupthink and allow people to do their own thing.
One thing we (favorite teacher and me) observed (this with 30+ year-old memory) is that one or two students in the large student body being recognized academically motivated others to work hard to get the same recognition. I graduated before I could see how far this went, but it was showing promise.
Yet, unless I'm misreading your comment, it appears as if a majority of students in the worse schools appear to be in the "unmotivated" class. Heck, even in my middle/upper-middle class suburban high school, that same divide between the "honors" and the "regular" kids was there.
I think the bigger societal issue is finding some way to get this majority interested in learning. That would have a far larger impact than giving more to the already motivated (if only due to sheer numbers). I realize this is a HUGE issue to tackle and unfortunately, its something that I have no answers for.