Am I missing something, or does this article spend hundreds of words pushing a "pro-excellence" plan without ever defining what they mean by excellence? It's hard to see how a dictionary definition ("the quality of being outstanding or extremely good") is useful for differentiating their success metrics from those of other stakeholders; so taking the steel man reading that this is a term of art and not just a meaningless label, a domain-specific definition for those of us less familiar in the art would be appreciated.

In K-12 education, there are two opposing views related to individual student achievement:

A) 'pro-excellence': raise the ceiling, aim to maximize the realization of human potential.

B) 'pro-equity': raise the floor, narrow the 'achievement gap' at all costs, including lowering the ceiling.

Viewpoint B is what guides much of district-level education policy in the US.