PeteStreet wrote: ↑Tue Oct 22, 2019 9:37 am
Does Fareed provide test scores and HS GPAs for those suspected of receiving advantageous preference? What about their respective schools’ admissions standards and scholarship criteria?
No, the CNN special was broad brush, covering a lot of topics in the hour, interspersed with lots of commercials.
The topics are worthy of greater analysis, and there are indeed substantive issues with which to be concerned, but the loose critique is less helpful, and I'd suggest inaccurately conflate.
I think the much more fundamental issues about our growing economic divide both here and in the world are not really explained by the make-up of our most 'elite' higher educational institutions.
First, it's not as if motivated (prepared) students don't have substantial other opportunities to distinguish themselves academically, and more importantly in their careers.
Second, the real educational opportunity issue is far more about the disparity much earlier in the process, pre-school, elementary, middle, and HS. Our funding of public education by local real estate taxes is, IMO, probably the biggest factor, given the challenge of legacy redlining, discrimination, and economic ghettoization.
Private schools have been one response by parents with means to provide maximal opportunities for their children, and these indeed were long bastions of opportunity friction, however most of the best of these have made concerted efforts to broaden their 'community' to support the brightest from low socio-economic means, racial diversity, etc. Just as have the most 'elite' colleges. Is it enough? No. But they are not the primary driver of inequality.
The issue is less these schools, than the failures of some parts of our public system. For instance, there is no question that children who live in trauma zones, with family issues, with violence as a daily reality, face tremendous challenges in learning. These situations require hugely more support in order to actually provide equitable 'opportunity' relative to children from stable, non-violent, economically comfortable families.
While those areas are the most challenging, it's also very important to recognize that very wealthy communities typically enjoy very strong public schools, very well funded both through taxes and parental and alumni involvement. They are akin to the best private schools in this regard. But the vast middle do not enjoy the incremental parental support, nor the tax base.