Is it better to be egalitarian in education or is it better to focus on raising the floor, or raise the median, or providing equal opportunity? They aren't the same thing, and it's very possible that the education system that focuses on one will miss out on parts of the others. You can make moral arguments in favoring each of those options (or even focusing on raising the average).
You can optimize for economic benefit, innovation, fairness, or passions. Their is plenty of non-draconian reasons for preferring each.
It's better to be egalitarian. The clientele of hackernews is predominantly people working in high paying industries, who were lucky enough to get the resources and opportunities to get there, in addition to a considerable amount of hard work. I pushed hard to get where I am today and personally benefitted from gifted child programs. What terrifies me is the idea that being born to slightly different parents or in a slightly different area could have had drastic effects on my outcome. I believe we should make policy decisions assuming any one of us could have been born to the poorest and most negligent parents imaginable. Making any other assumption is being dishonest about the benefits afforded to you by your upbringing.
Wouldn't it be better to raise the floor? If given the choice of a higher floor but a higher ceiling of education quality vs equal but lower quality for everyone, I would prefer the former.
You can optimize for economic benefit, innovation, fairness, or passions. Their is plenty of non-draconian reasons for preferring each.