Having a more centered economic distribution amongst children is a good one. It is non-sensical and anti-meritocratic to have a large enough skew amongst child starting positions as to render meritocratic testing irrelevant.
It's possible our declining academic performance is simply another artifact of rising inequality.
Or is it? we generally know how to solve inequality - we don't know how to solve student assessment. Higher taxes and rising inflation/interest rates reduce inequality.
It's possible our declining academic performance is simply another artifact of rising inequality.