I don't think it's nurture rather than nature -- what I believe is that there are are people who believe what they have been told about maths, about themselves in regard to maths and about others in regard to maths. Maths above any other subject has all these myths swirling around it, myths whose main lesson for the majority of children is that an elite 'gets maths' and the rest shouldn't even bother trying. One example of a particularly pernicious myth regarding maths that has been gradually debunked over the last few decades and that continues to be challenged is that girls don't 'get it' and that it is just for boys. But the other myths are just as dangerous.
If every student could be persuaded that effort would result in good grades then a lot more might give it a shot. But a lot of students believe they don't have that magical set of brain cells that they have been told maths requires.
(I also think the idea that boys have somehow a more competitive nature than girls and would respond more than a girl-heavy group to the idea of publicly ranking the top ten is a myth. This is based on my observation of DD1 and the students she graduated from high school with. And there are lots of very bad maths teachers.)
One example of someone who flourished without the benefit of a teacher until three years after most children in the world are exposed to formal teaching of maths (at age 7) doth not an argument make.
The Shirts article linked to earlier and the mention of StarPower are interesting examples of an item taken from its original context and misused in order to achieve the ends of the groups using it both in teacher training and by the poster who linked to the article that explained it.
In the first place, as an exercise in teacher training, StarPower really has no rightful role imo. It is meant to be a tool where a school administration could examine the entire culture of the school and figure out ways to tweak it or throw it out altogether to make the entity a more productive place for all under its roof. It is not meant to be a way to reinforce people's perceptions of the class system per se, but interesting nevertheless that this is a conclusion that someone with a British background would leap at. An American might immediately think of the estrangement and disengagement of African Americans from the education system if confronted with StarPower in the school context. I personally think such an exercise would be very useful in a certain expensive Irish school I hear a lot about, and aspects of Irish culture that are reflected in the way the school is run spring to my mind. Various guilt or otherwise sensitive buttons are pressed by the exercise, depending on context. But it was intended primarily as a tool for administrations and for the powers that be in any given school to examine the power dynamic and the role of the residual culture in that particular setting, whether it is a force for good or for evil, so to speak.
As to the No Child Left Behind comments this legislation attempted to force schools to be accountable to some authority for the fate of the children who are forced to go to them. Catchment areas are rigorously enforced in the US, and the financial facts of life make it well nigh impossible for poorer students to simply move to a better school district if the schools in their own are no good. Students are often trapped in schools that fail to teach them even basic skills. In addition, the US government cannot sponsor or support any religious-run schools, and the poor can't afford to send their children there either. There is a debate about government-issued school vouchers that would enable parents to pay the fees for private, overwhelmingly religious (and in fact mostly Catholic) schools. It is highly unlikely that government will ever be able to tackle the plight of students stuck in terrible schools that way. No Child Left Behind tried to juggle with the only elements of the educational setup that government could try to manipulate, making schools accountable to the communities they serve, and this involved making results public, thus making school comparisons possible. Some (including Shirts) would call it an exercise in making brisks without straw, as no amount of telling schools in inner cities that they are failing will necessarily help them to effect change the problems faced by their students make effective participation in the system very difficult. Whatever NCLB may be, I don't think it should be used as any kind of argument in the context of British education, since in the article the pov of StarPower and what it hopes to achieve are firmly placed in the very specific American context.