cream the crop

From cream of the crop.

• "In the past, most agencies assumed that the other agencies were “creaming the crop,” training (or placing) the easiest or most docile or best-educated clients, manipulating data (or losing it if necessary) to look good: promising to do next year what they had promised to do the year before."
• "Taking new designs and young designers upmarket can take them out of context, though, killing idealistic ambitions with adult realities and removing them from the wider audience that might stand to profit from the value of their solutions. Mr. Pucci risks criticism that he could be creaming the crop."
• "Principals of nearby schools felt they had students “taken” from them, other teachers thought small schools were being given special treatment and more money, and some thought the small schools were “creaming the crop”—taking the best students from other schools."

• cherry-pick

• creaming of the crop