Idiocy in social engineering, or the return of Harrison Bergeron

The head education administrator in the state of Hordaland made headlines last week when she went to the media with her idea that Norwegian schools should get rid of homework and that pupils could (and should) refuse to do it. Let me explain:
According to the current incarnation of the Education Law, students' grades are to be based solely on their competence in the subject curriculum at the end of term. This means, among other things, that a student's course grade shouldn't be a simple average of their grades over the term but rather a global evaluation of their competence at the end. In English, for instance, if you get all C's the first semester but work hard towards the end and are doing A work at the end of spring term, you ought to get that A rather a B that splits the difference between the first and second semester grades. I don't disagree. In light of this, the education director's point that a teacher can't mark you down for not doing homework is well taken. If you can get an A in my course without doing anything at all outside of class time, more power to you. The total number of students I've had in ten years who could pull that trick off, however, I could count on an obscene gesture of one hand. But sure, if you can perform at an A level without doing any homework, you surely deserve that A.
However, the education director's reasoning for pushing for the elimination of homework from school simply appalls. She reasoned that kids from families where the parents are better educated (and generally native Norwegians) have an unfair advantage in school when teachers give homework since they can get better help with the work at home than other kids whose parents aren't in a position to help them. The solution to this inequity? Not after-school programs offering extra help for kids who can't get that help at home, but to get rid of homework altogether! Then the playing field will be truly level, and in that she's undoubtedly right. But what level?
Imagine how great Norwegian high school seniors will be at, say, math after thirteen years of never having to do a single problem except when they're at school. Or literature classes where kids have no time for discussion since they have to do all the reading in class as they can't be asked to do it at any other time.
That sort of brilliant thinking brought China the glorious successes of the Cultural Revolution.
Pop quiz, hotshot: Let's say you have two kids. One is born blind, the other sighted, and you want to be scrupulously fair to both. Do you teach the blind kid Braille or just put out the other one's eyes?
And this woman is the state education director.