Ivy League
Daddy, can you work for Chrysler so I can go to Yale?
01/03/08 13:29 Categories: Higher education
❝The cat's out of the bag, folks. Poor kids have the life and coast right into selective schools, according to a new book [...] Is she for real?❞
Eduwonkette, being Eduwonkette, provides great figures and studies to back up her indignation. I'll go a different route.
❝Best case: Neither of your parents attended college at all, your father is a factory worker, and your mom is on disability. . . . Worst case: Your father went to Yale as an undergraduate and then Harvard Business School and is now an investment banker and your mom went to Brown, holds a Ph.D. in chemistry and works as a research chemist.❞
Locally, if "best case" parents are factory workers that student might attend Fox, Hazelwood or a similar district. The district isn't losing accreditation but is isn't an Ivy League feeder either. Since those parents didn't attend college, they may support their child's schooling but have probably left the responsibility up to the school.
The "worst case" student probably attended Clayton or Ladue if public or MICDS or Burroughs if private. Those are all Ivy League feeders with the private schools being on WSJ's list of top 50 feeder schools. That student also probably had tutors or classes in the summer starting in elementary school, not so much to feed a resume but to enrich. Language immersion classes are popular as are courses at the Gifted Resource Council. If the parents thought math facts were not stressed enough, they probably enrolled the student in Kumon. Home libraries are large, and educational kits and projects abound. All this is just in elementary school.
Go back even further. Say the "best case" student is a transfer student and is able to go to the same public county school as the "worst case." Unfortunately, she'll come into K already at a disadvantage. The other kid has had a high quality preschool, has traveled abroad, been taken to lots of cultural events such as the symphony, participated in a children's opera and already knows how to read. The school will do everything it can, but it can't make up completely for the enriched home life.
Yes, obviously some kids overcome odds, but there is a reason for the statistics favoring the upper middle class and wealthy.
In the interest of full disclosure, I would probably buy Hernandez's book for my kids. (I would NOT, however, buy Elizabeth Wissner-Gross's What High Schools Don't Tell You, the other book reviewed by the WSJ. Recommending students only write positive puff pieces on school activities if they want to be a journalist? Blech.)