Equal Opportunity. I like that. Let’s start with closing Sidwell and forcing the children of politicians to go to public school. As a matter of fact, if it isn’t a religious school or a home school, the school should be closed and the kids go to public schools.
Now that our kids are all on the same playing field, let’s see what the outcomes are.
I get your point, but that is kind of a statist approach.
Another issue The Bell Curve discusses is the ongoing assortative mating by IQ. Much more than in any previous period, smart people marry smart people. If there is any hereditary component at all to intelligence, over time this will result in a largely hereditary upper class. And most who have studied it see a hereditary component of 1/2 to 2/3.
One of the flies in this ointment is the differential birth rate. High income, and presumably more competent people, have a much lower birth rate than low income people. If this is indeed correlated with intelligence and intelligence is party hereditary, after a few generations our population will be significantly less intelligent on average.
How about vouchering the schools so that middle and working class parents could afford private or parochial schools. Sidwell is not a fair comparison; it’s an outlier, even on the private school spectrum. Forget Sidwell. It’s a great school, and should be for the price, but it’s not the model for systemic reform.
Back in the world of the attainable/affordable, here in DC the per-pupil cost at DC public schools is 2-3 times higher, depending on whose figures you trust, than the typical parochial school tuition. If there were enough seats available, you could voucher the system, transfer every kid from DCPS into well managed and decently performing parochial schools, and save hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
My view is that we should empower the parents and focus on building capacity in the private, competitive system. The lefties, of course, think the answer is to kill off the competition and herd everyone back onto the reservation. Surprised to find you in the latter camp.