I think many do actually care about bright students, but it is exceptionally hard problem to solve. I remember a dad in my neighbourhood with similar frustrations as me.

He has this really curious kid who was learning all sort of stuff in math and reading. Once he got to school all his curiority got killed.

But the dad admitted that when he had been a teacher he had not been any better at catering to kids who needed extra challenges. You got limited hours on your hand and class room teaching is structured in a particular way.

Personally I think the flipped classroom ideas explored by Khan Academy might be the solution. Students watch videos of lectures at home and can advance as fast as they like. In school teachers primarily help them with homework. School hours is thus more of a mentoring role, than teaching from the front of the classroom.

That solves a tricky problem, which is that 25 different students cannot possible be suited to follow the same material at the same pace for every day for years.

Just piling on extra homework is just seen as an affront. Like my son would get some more challenging assignments. But often that comes in addition to listening to lectures which are really boring to him.

And extra challenging homework is easily seen as some form of punishment for doing better in school. I don't think we should "help" bright students by having them to harder tasks in addition to the easier ones. They should skip the easy part and get to material suited for their level right away.