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While I believe that school choice has its benefits, there are a lot of nuances of school vouchers that hurt education.Intellectually, the idea is good. Let all families choose where they send kids to schools. I work and teach in New York City, which is a playground for school choice because of the public transportation system and families being able to send their students to public or charter schools anywhere in NYC. There are few places where this can work.Public vs. Private Goods - The Misconception that Education is a Private BusinessPeople seem to forget that there is a difference between the way that public goods and private goods function in terms of economics. Public education is exactly that - a public good. Public education isn't quite a tragedy of the commons, but more a tragedy of the anticommons. Many shareholders in this good, too many ideas, and the right things not being done.The desire to make schools more “efficient” and more of a “business” is inane. It’s like trying to make your local park more “efficient” and more of a “business”. Let’s talk about Central Park in New York City. If you look at Central Park itself, it loses money. Yes, there are businesses within it. However, the maintenance of the grounds and facilities are far exceeded by the actual income of the few restaurants, vendors and other activities in the park. Yet, the benefits of Central Park to the city are undeniable beyond the bottom line if you look at what the park does to real estate prices, local commerce and also to the mental wellness of the city’s occupants. There is value added by the existence of Central Park that far outweighs the costs. Just like education’s value-added far outweighs the cost of it for our society.Competition means there is a loser. Why should schools compete, shouldn’t they collaborate? Others have written about how great it is to have competition between schools. Now, I ask why? What is your goal behind education for children? Is it socialization/normalization? Is it to encourage an entrepreneurial spirit? Is it for creativity? Is it for critical thinking? Is it to be good consumers in our society? Is it to select the correct bubble and fill it in on a “standardized” test that is controlled by a “non-profit” organization that makes millions of dollars in profit? (Note: I’m not going to go into the non-fiction tome that I could write on the definition of a good school and what makes a good school.)Private schools are a better value is a myth. My parents sent me to parochial school because they thought it would be better for my education. By third grade, the school informed my parents they had no idea what to do with me in mathematics because I was beyond their ability to teach me and that I should go to the public school because our public schools were better than our private schools. Luckily, my school was honest. In my public school, I had access to the gifted programs, and was able to do slightly more advanced mathematics and participate in a wider range of activities. I was also able to be around a diverse student body socioeconomically and culturally. This was an important part of my development, and has allowed me to be more critical of my background and the advantages it afforded.Everyone has a right to an opinion about education. They have to accept that they might be completely wrong.Unfortunately and fortunately, everyone has an opinion about education because they have received it in some way, shape or form. However, they forget that they are experts at being students. That does not mean that they are experts at being teachers. I'm not saying all charter/school choice is bad, just that it's not the intellectual ideal that people have thought it is.Here is an analogy: Just because I have eaten a lot of food over my lifetime, does not mean that I know how to prepare it well or replicate most dishes that are placed in front of me without a cheat sheet (recipe). There are some people who are naturally good cooks. Even then, I won't meet all the nuances to make the same dish as the person who created the dish. With practice I can become a good cook, and maybe even great at making specific dishes. Very few people claim to be able to cook every dish put in front of them, or even know what to suggest other than it needs more/less salt. Yet, they will still have an opinion about how good that food is. And that opinion matters, but their ideas may be helpful, or they may be disastrous to the recipe.The topic at hand: school vouchers/school choice.Perceived "good" schools may have more applicants than they can take in based on their existing resources. This allows these "good" schools to cherry-pick the students that they would like to accept, meaning that there are fewer special education, english language learners, students from non-traditional families, homeless students, etc. who are represented in the average student body of a "good" charter or "good" choice school.This is a common case in NYC where ostensibly school choice is guaranteed at the high school level (kids go through a ranking process in 8th grade, where they rank high schools, and they are placed depending on a couple of factors that is obscured and probably similar to the residency process in medical school), the populations are vastly different when comparing charter school vs. public school populations. So, the first consequence is schools are allowed to discriminate as a result of school choice.The second consequence is that public money (tax dollars) that follows each student is being given to private institutions. This is actually important and necessary for students with special needs who might have needs that exceed the capability of a typical public school to provide (e.g. needing 1-on-1 classes for each subject area, education exclusively in ASL, education for the visually impaired, etc.).However, if a lot of students are taking their public money to private institutions, then we are essentially lining the pockets of large corporations, who in NYC also use public school spaces to house their charter schools and notably do not pay for rent for these spaces. Basically, NYC charter schools are getting a double break in terms of costs, they get money for each kid, and they get to have their operation costs minimized. This also means that money is being taken away from schools that are struggling, and could use it to hire people to train and improve their personnel as opposed to just giving up. (This is a whole other issue... American tendency to just go for the next new thing, as opposed to fixing the problem... capitalism/consumerism, etc.)The third consequence is that students can be discriminated against and actually be expelled from the school or pushed out of these privatized schools without just cause. Since they are not technically public schools, they are not beholden to figure out how to work with and for a student to help them be educated, regardless of their needs educationally, emotionally, socially, financially, etc. There are frequent news stories of how students that don't "fit in" private schools that penalize students who don’t meet “codes” (i.e. look/act white enough) and others where students are being "encouraged" to leave charter/private schools. They range from humane counseling to visit other schools to repeated suspensions/detentions in order to discourage them from coming to school.The fourth consequence (of some privatized situations funded by large corporations) is that those corporations control the curriculum (imagine what this means about science, politics, etc.), the teaching pedagogy and the school environment. In some cases, that means that teachers are essentially following a script. Thinking outside of the box or moving at a different pace are not necessarily encouraged. From my point of view, in some of these circumstances, students are being taught to be consumers, not to be thinkers, questioners, challengers of the status quo. I have seen teachers being burnt out because of unrealistic expectations set by corporations where the people in charge don't have any pedagogical or psychological background, quitting because they had no freedom of choice, no ability to make decisions, no trust in their capabilities as educators. (This is a whole other discussion and issue that I have with people who think that teachers can easily be replaced.)The fifth consequence is that schools choose their bottom line instead of the best teachers. Teachers who have more experience (and tend to get paid more, but rarely more than low 6 figures [and this is rare, only after teaching for over 30 years in NYC, which has the highest teacher pay anywhere in the country]) are pushed out because of the bottom line. Schools choosing their bottom line instead of the best teachers is again playing into private goods economics and not public goods economics. Paying a wage that is well-deserved for someone who has a master's degree or higher in their field of expertise and the years of experience, practice and self-reflection to be a master teacher is logical when we consider their value-added.Wait, what about those bad teachers, I hear about them all the time? There are many detractors who will complain about overpriced teachers who don’t care. Every profession has its black sheep. However, if the focus were on the best education by the best teachers, then mentorship and teacher retention would be a focus of our education system instead of the current “gotcha-now-we’ll-penalize-you” policy. (Long essays have been written about testing and its effects on teacher and school evaluation.) I argue that these “bad teachers” would not have had the chance to become who they are today. And maybe, just maybe, teaching would become a profession where the best and brightest seek to work and stay working because they are not being constantly undermined and underpaid. Maybe our education system would be much better as a result.

Which high school you attend and how you compare academically relative to your peers matters, and sometimes is, if not the determining factor, then at least a very important factor in the college admission process. By the word “peers” I mean both those students around the country and the world who are going to apply to the same colleges as you, as well as those students in your school who are applying to these colleges too. There are some paradoxes and contradictions when it comes to evaluating if the particular secondary school you currently attend will benefit or hurt you in terms of getting accepted to highly selective colleges. And it will take me more than you probably want to know or read to try to cover this in ways that are not misleading or superficial.IFirst of all, it is important to note that after or during the process of evaluating your particular application, virtually every highly selective university looks at applicants within the context of the school you currently attend. Admission offices like to promote how they make decisions based upon a holistic evaluation of each individual applicant. Every admission office website underscores this part of the process and it is one way that the US admission process differs from most others around the globe which tend to use national exams to determine who gets in. In the US, colleges make it very clear that they are fully committed to enrolling a diverse student body. Diversity is one of the vaguer words in the admission process vocabulary and it has a range of meanings, but you can be sure that it applies to students from:different backgrounds and locations around the US and the worlddifferent income levels (especially if the school has committed to meeting full aid for all admitted students)different racial and ethnic groupsdifferent sexual orientationdifferent educational backgrounds (a range that covers the first in the family to attend college to having two parents with professional/advanced degrees).There are other groups that certain types of schools highlight (for example, in and out of state residents for state affiliated colleges). But not nearly as many schools put in writing that they wish to enroll students from a large number of high schools Why? Because in order to do this it might make it harder for students who attend some exceptionally good secondary schools and who might have stronger academic credentials than students from schools that rarely send students to highly selective schools (both schools in rural areas and inner-city neighborhoods would fall into the latter category).Schools do two different things when evaluating applicants—one is to read students as individuals and the other is to read them as a member of one or more groups. The former is what most people think of when they interpret the holistic admission process; the latter is often brought up in ways that show how contentious putting people in groups can be (especially by race or legacy status or athletic ability) in a country in which the national discourse often focuses on the sanctity of the individual. Colleges and universities, however, have different priorities in part because they are composed of a variety of groups and are committed to serving communities not just individuals.One group that students are put in by colleges and universities (unless they are home schooled) is the secondary school they attend. Simply put, colleges and universities evaluate and then use information about a students’ secondary school in terms of the offerings that are available and in terms of where the each student who has applied ranks against the others. Colleges run data that shows all the students who have applied from the same secondary school in a given year. In addition, some schools run historical summaries which show what the school has done with that particular secondary school’s applicants in previous years. (There is a platform that gathers data for secondary schools about their applicants to colleges, called Naviance. It uses gpa and test scores that aps on a scattergram all the decisions made on applicants over a 5-year period--accept, wait list, deny).Colleges examine students within school groups for several reasons. First of all, there are now very few highly competitive secondary schools that actually provide rank in class to colleges. By highly competitive, I mean selective private schools, boarding schools, and public schools that are located in high income school districts and which send the vast majority of their students on to 4-year colleges. The schools have found that they take too much heat from parents about tiny differences in gpa which goes into determining who ends up as the valedictorian or in the top 10% of the class. (Some schools now name dozens of students as covaledictorians --a few have over 100). This decision not to rank students is not just to give a large group of students "special snowflake" status. They also believe ranking creates unnecessary competition among the students who are already stressed out about getting the highest possible gpa now that admission to the most highly selective schools is under 10%.But here is the thing that many do not know about how colleges still manage to create its own ranking of students. Even if schools provide no information about rank to universities, students still get “ranked” in school groups. Colleges look at students’ transcripts and examine their gpa relative to other applicants so even though there is not an official ranking by the secondary school the colleges still rank students on their own. This can be helpful to the colleges for a number of reasons. Secondary schools determine gpa in very different ways. Some schools add .5 to the gpa for classes that are designated as honors and give a whole point added to the gpa for AP classes. It is no longer unusual to see students with a 3.8 gpa actually being in the bottom half of the class due to weighting. Having students group;ed by gpa lets admission officers get a snapshot of the individual student within the group as well as a snapshot of how much weighting goes into the grading system. Some schools have admission officers firt read applicants in school groups, so they see immediately where they stand compared to their peers. Others look at school groups after the application has been read by at least one or mother readers. Looking at school groups also helps the colleges to make sure they have been at least somewhat consistent in their decisions.When schools receive thousands of applications it is hard to keep track of every applicant and every decision without running reports. For example, school groups give colleges the opportunity to have another look to see why a student with a lower gpa was offered admission over another student with higher grades and testing. This helps, in some cases, avoid a call from the counselors from the secondary school after the decisions have gone out asking why a “weaker” student was offered admission/ Parents often call asking this same question, but most colleges will not address particular cases with parents. In some cases, it is clear why a student lower down in terms of gpa was offered admission--students with a special talent, a legacy tie, or who is a member of an under-represented group; or who is the first in the family attend college , or from a low-income background all might get in ahead of a student who does not have one of these so called “hooks”.While colleges all say they do not have quotas (and this is true I think) they do, however, have goals and limitations in terms of the number of students they can accept. For example, State universities have, in some cases, legal restrictions on the percentage of in and out of state residents. They must determine exactly how many students they can bring in from out of state or face budget cuts of they exceed this amount. State schools want a good representation of out of state students because typically the applicant pool is much larger (49 states vs. one) and the amount of tuition they pay is at least double those of in-state. It is always a balancing act to try to come in at just the right percentage and whether one wants to call this a quota or not this is effectively what it is.Private schools can drill down deep into data to make sure they get the mix of female and male they want. How else could Harvard, for example, come in at just about 50/50 year in and year out without running numbers and effectively picking students in part by gender. Some colleges narrow offers down by geography, so, for example, they will only offer to so many students from the Northeast or the far West etc. And more controversially, some schools have “goals” what the percentage of students they wish to enroll by race. Of course, it is not a firm quota (an exact number) but the difference between a goal and quota is often negligible. However, it is against the law to have quotas based on race, but it is not if a school has goals. A look at the percentage of Asian students at the Ives will give some sense of how virtually all these schools bring in almost the same exact percentages each year. This is not an accident and is one of the things that will likely come up in the Harvard lawsuit that is unfolding as I write this.There are no laws about giving students from a specific school or geographic location a plus or minus in the overall evaluation. For example, it is harder to get in from the Northeast to most of the colleges in Boston unless the school is what is called a “feeder school”. A feeder school is one that most have likely heard of think -- Exeter. Typically, at a school like about a third or more of the students attend top 20 ranked schools attend Ivies. Some schools benefit from having “family ties”. Boston Latin is a wonderful school and does have a number of great students. They also have a number of students whose parents are on the faculty at Harvard, and schools like to keep faculty happy. Any college will give at least a special look to students whose parents or parents work at the school.The joke that is often told in admission is that a student who attends a school in North Dakota has a much better chance of getting in than a student from virtually any school in the Northeast or West Coast. But it isn’t really a joke. Colleges do like to show on their academic profile that they have enrolled students from all or nearly all 50 States. It is less true internationally, in part because there are far more countries than States. Nevertheless, it is far harder to get into top colleges from China, India, Korea, and Singapore than it is from any other countries in the world. These countries produce thousands of students who are as good or better than any students anywhere, but colleges are not going to use up all their international slots on just a few countries any more than they are going to enroll students from a small group of States in the US. Students from some countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Honduras, The Congo, for example, would be given a huge plus in admission because so few students have the academic background to do well in a competitive college or university. Many of these students will need financial aid and only a very few US schools have aid for international students and almost all of them are the most highly selective schools.There is, however, one set of 17 schools around the world that has a unique advantage in placing students at top universities. They are called United World Colleges (UWCs for short), and they are unique places located in often less than typical campuses all over the globe (a castle in Wales, on top of a mountain in India etc.).United World CollegesEach of them has a student body who attend these boarding schools (a few offer day school options), for at least two years while completing courses in the International Baccalaureate program. Most of the students who attend these schools do so because they have been awarded need-based scholarships. Their funding comes from a variety of sources--countries, royal families, and, most significantly, a US billionaire, Shelby Davis, who has given a billion dollars to the UWCs to provide scholarships for students who to attend both the UWCs and then a select group of highly selective colleges. His funding permits schools to enroll these often-needy students without having to spend as much of its own need based funds to enroll them. Therefore, the acceptance rates of students from the UWCs to schools in the US is much higher than almost any international school and higher than most schools in the US too. Students have to be selected through a rigorous process from countries around the world especially if they need full funding.I have been to many of the campuses and the students who attend these schools often have overcome staggering odds to end up there. They have risen to the top of their countries’ education systems despite grinding poverty or war or civic unrest. Some students who can pay do attend these schools too and they often benefit both in terms of living among a truly global student body and because these schools enjoy great relationships with the top universities in the US and around the world. Students who come from these schools add a perspective that few students ever could, and this is one of the reasons they are admitted at a higher rate than students from even most of the top secondary schools. If students were truly interested in a unique secondary education and gaining an advantage in the highly selective admission process, then attending a UWC is an option to consider.IIOne of the best books I have read about the admission process is The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg. I have written about it several times because even though It is a bit dated it is still one of the best inside views of the admission process I have read. It traces the way one particular admission officer at Wesleyan University does his job. One part of his job consisted of fielding phone calls from counselors from some of the top private schools who were advocating for some of their students prior to final decisions by the admission office. Colleges do not like to talk much about this because it smacks of elitism and favoritism. In one particular case a counselor advocates for a student who was on the borderline for Wesleyan and the call edged the student into the offer pile. And while this it is true this is clearly not fair, it does not tell the whole story.Networking is going to happen in any field and to think it won’t is willfully naïve. For example, there are national and local conferences all over the world for educators to meet and connect. The vast majority of secondary school counselors who attend these meetings are from either private schools or schools that have large enough budgets to send people to a several day conference that will end up costing thousands of dollars. Schools also host counselors on their campuses and often pay the fees for them to fly in and go to MLB baseball games etc. At one level, everyone is performing as a lobbyist. Admission officers try to get the counselors to encourage great students to apply and counselors encourage the colleges to take more of their students. Colleges usually have admission offices that are organized so that there are regional readers or deans who are in charge of a particular part of the country. The admissions officers and the high school counselors then get to know one another and build relationships some of them extending back decades. Like any form of networking ,a large part is focused on building trust. If there is trust then when a secondary school counselor makes a special case for a student there may be some flexibility in moving as student from the wait list or deny piles into the offer pile.This may sound more sinister than it often is. It could be the counselor is advocating for a scholarship student at the school who has lower testing and grades but who would be a good fit for the school. So, while this student may end up having an advantage in getting in because of this special appeal, many in education would support this less than perfectly fair process. In addition, the main figure in The Gatekeepers is a strong advocate for under-represented students. He becomes an advocate for these students and they have a much better chance of getting in than most student at even the most prestigious secondary schools in the US. But it would be disingenuous to leave things here. Counselors may contact schools to go over the school group prior to decisions going out and if the counselor has someone who is currently on the wait list they may do a quick pitch for the student. And some will also ask for students who are in the deny group be moved to the wait list just to make the decision less of a blow to the student’s ego. Some colleges do not accept these kinds of phone calls. Others do. Some change decisions based on the calls. Others don’t. But back room deals happen everywhere, and this is one part of the admission process that does favor the schools that have developed relationships and contacts.The typical narrative in the world of admission these days often highlights the gap between the haves and have nots. The gap is so wide and deep that it makes the process unfair to those who do not have the economic means to compete with those who do. Students whose parents are in the top 10% in terms of income can afford to live in neighborhoods where the schools are good, or, if they think public schools is not the best choice then they send their children to private day schools or boarding schools. In addition, they can pay for expensive test prep, summer programs, travel, access to internships, and the kind of overall support that is not possible for those who are low-income. Equal access is an ideal that does not come close to existing in the real world.As with any metanarrative that gets applied as a uniform template of a large and unwieldy group of disparate people, there is a lot of truth to this but there are also important exceptions. If we start to get granular about how each student is hurt or helped by their circumstances, then things can get complicated. There is, however, no doubt that in the aggregate, those at the top of the income pyramid attend better schools, have more support and so get, far more often than not, a dramatic advantage in selective admission process.While this is all true, it does not tell the whole story. For example, there are low income students who attend Exeter, Andover, Brearley , Lawrenceville, Harvard-Westlake etc. on need-based scholarships. These students are often the ones who have the best chance of anyone in these tony schools to get into the most selective universities, because they not only attend an elite secondary school, but also have overcome a great deal in order to be there. Colleges are committed to enrolling under-represented students like these because they clearly have the ability to do well academically and socially on any campus.Does attending a great secondary school alter one’s life chances and not just the chances of getting into a small set of selective colleges? Of course, but the changes that occur for low-income students are greater than those who are already in the upper middle class. Advantaged students typically have a strong safety net that will help them in life. Low income students who get in to top ranked colleges on full need-based scholarship will graduate without any debt and will have a chance to enter into competition for jobs on Wall Street, Silicon Valley. When 30-40 % of the students at Princeton go into the highly competitive field of consulting upon graduation it shows that where one goes to college matters and this is one of the reasons so many families and students are focused on getting into elite college—their life chances are better, in the aggregate, for their graduates.IIIIs everyone who attends a great private or manet school in a better position to get accepted to the top ranked colleges?Sort of. I often tell the story of a conversation I had with the college counselor at one of the top boarding schools in the US. Schools like this tout their 30% acceptance rate to Ivies when trying to get people to pay $60,000 a year to send their son or daughter there. I asked the counselor if he ever disaggregated that 30% and showed the prospective parents the ones who get in to those schools. And he said “of course not “. Why? Because it would not be in the school’s best interest to do so.So, I will do it. Of that 30%, a fair number of the students are recruited athletes. Not many secondary schools have hockey rinks (the school I mentioned above has 2), but all the Ivies have hockey teams and they need athlete that will make them look good against their Ivy competition. While these students are not often at the top academically they do, if they are identified as recruited athletes, have the best chance of getting into top schools. Talented athletes, especially in a few sports that are largely limited to a tiny number of secondary schools—hockey and rowing and squash being the top 3—are far more likely to get in the any valedictorian at almost any school who does not something special besides great grades, test scores and recommendations. It should not go unremarked that almost all these sports are composed of white students.In the case of rowing it is best to be female. Title 9 legislation means colleges need women rowers to help offset the large number of football players to meet the guideline that there should be equal number of male and female varsity athletes. Football is a problem because there are so many players on the team and, obviously, no female team, so rowing, which requires a number of boats and athletes helps offset football. Very few schools around the US public or private, have boathouses and crew teams. Talented athletes who attend schools with high price tags and great specialized athletic facilities reap the benefits of attending these schools.In addition, low-income under-represneted scholarship students who attend these schools are also at a significant advantage in the admission process. In most cases, these students have far better academic programs and opportunities at these schools than if they had stayed at home. And then there are, of course the legacies who get special consideration for admission at almost all of the most selective colleges. The acceptance rate for legacies at the Ivies is far higher than it is for students who does not have a hook (athlete, under-represented group). In addition, there are international students who, if the come from certain Asian countries typically end up at or near the top of the class academically. Because attending top schools in the US is a goal many of the best students in China wish to pursue and because it is seen as an edge in admission if a Chinese student attends a great boarding school in the US it is now as hard or harder to get into to top boarding schools from China than it is to get in all but the most selective colleges. They tend to come in with exceptional academic backgrounds and tend to leave with academic prizes at the end of the year along with a prestigious college to head off to in the Fall.What all this means is that the average (if this is the correct word since getting into these schools is very competitive) student who attends these top boarding schools and who wishes to get in to a top 20 school without a hook may actually be at a competitive disadvantage, in some cases, than if they had stayed at home and been a star in the local school. I would still argue that the overall experience of attending a great boarding school may be worth the investment because of the things that come with the education that do not automatically translate into being offered admission to a top 10 university.Something similar in terms of admission happens at the magnet schools that are public and paid for by taxpayers. Places like Stuyvesant and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology have the reputation as among the best secondary schools in the US. The students who get in have been at the very top of the selection criteria and they feed off the atmosphere of learning and, typically, do amazing things in secondary school and beyond. The list of Novel winners and others who have done exceptional things who come from the New York magnet schools is long.But there are two problems that these students have when it comes to getting accepted at top schools. The first has to do with the effort of colleges to enroll students from a wide variety of secondary schools around the US. They could take a couple hundred students from each of the schools I have mentioned and all of them could compete both academically and outside of the classroom with just about anybody. But colleges want to get students who will contribute because they have different experiences and backgrounds. Therefore, schools limit the number of students they will take from even the best schools.To give just one example, I will use information about students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax Virginia. I have written about this school before and have included some great comments about the experience of going there from students. It is without doubt one of the top secondary schools in the world. Although a public school, it requires everyone who wishes to attend to apply and it is not unlike the holistic process that colleges use. They accept about 17% of those who apply.There are several things worth pointing out on the profile. The first is the average test scores students earn. The SAT average, of 2200 ( or 1510, converting it from the old to the new SAT) puts the typical student above the top 98th percentile in the nation. This means in their class of over 400 students at least 200 are in the top 1%. In the admission profession many people point out that SATs are not a good predictor of academic success compared to other measures such as the transcript and grades. While this is true of scores overall, those students who score in the top 1% are far more likely to do well academically that any student who is in the top 50% or below. Most studies about the effectiveness of standardized tests to do not disaggregate test scores at the tail ends of the bell curve since it undermines the narrative that scores are not useful. But if top 1% scores do not convince people who hate the SAT that the students at TJ are better prepared than most to do well there are other factors cannot be easily dismissed.There is almost no disagreement that the two factors that are the best predictors of academic success are-- courses a student takes and the grades he or she earns during grades 9-12. The course offerings at TJ are far beyond what almost any secondary school offers. Many TJ students are arriving on college campuses several years ahead in terms of course work in the STEM fields. In fact, many TJ students arrive on campus with a lot more STEM courses than many students who attend college for four years. And the courses they take are not the whole story. They also have conducted research in ways very few secondary students do. Students have the benefit of being in a research hub, so they can get experience at start up tech firms and NIH, to name just a few.Once again, these opportunities and puts TJ students at the top 1%. When focusing on grades, however, it is hard to make a case that a TJ student has higher grades than most other students. Grade inflation is so rampant in high schools that almost 50% now earn A grades. As gpas continue to rise the ability of schools to predict success based on grades fall. In addition, more and more schools no longer rank their students. A generation ago only small private schools did not rank. Now almost all private schools and most public schools in the suburbs and upper middle-income districts no longer rank. Schools choose not to rank for a variety of reasons in part because it seems misleading to differentiate students by tiny difference in gpa that may be based on whether a student took a gym class or not and in part because the US News ranks schools based on the % of students in the top 10% and schools with great students were seeing fewer students get in because it would potentially lower the rankings.A's are on the rise in report cards, but SAT scores struggleEven though the average gpa at TJ is quite high there is still one way for their students to demonstrate have actually earned their high grades--the results of their AP exams. As the profile states, students took nearly 3900 AP exams. This is such a staggeringly large number that I would bet that it tops the total number of APs taken by all the students in certainly less than populous States. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that 97% of the students earn grades of 3 or higher, the score that many colleges use to grant academic credit.The reason I underscore the AP numbers is that the Dean of Admission at Harvard has said that AP scores are the best predictor of success there, better even than grades and transcript:We have found that the best predictors at Harvard are Advanced Placement tests and International Baccalaureate Exams, closely followed by the College Board subject tests. High school grades are next in predictive power, followed by the SAT and ACT.Guidance Office: Answers From Harvard's Dean, Part 2Given all this data which demonstrates that TJ is at the very top in terms of preparing students to do well at any university, one would assume that this would translate into the number of students who get into the top 30 ranked schools being exceptionally high. And this is true. Sort of. (Again.)A glance at the profile show that of the acceptance rate at three of the top State Universities in the US is far higher than their average acceptance rate. For Uva-- 224/348 students were accepted (64% acceptance). the average acceptance rate for Virginia residents to Uva is 29%. William and Mary and Virginia Tech accepted 82% of TJ applicants. These colleges recognize the strength of entire student body at TJ. During my time at Uva the statistics showed that students from TJ earned the highest gpa of any school with over 10 students enrolled of any school in the world. Given that there are over 400 students from TJ at Uva this is a testament that the school has done exactly what it was designed to do—produce expectational graduates who will do well in college.Looking at a number of highly selective colleges on the profile, it is clear that they too accept TJ students at a rate that is much higher than the typical high school. Technical schools like CMU and Georgia Tech offer to over 34% of its applicant about 20 percentage points higher than the overall acceptance rates. Most of the top ranked schools acceptance rate tare twice as large as the overall rate. But there are exceptions.Princeton, MIT and U Penn offer to about 10% of the TJ applicants. For a school that specializes in STEM the acceptance rate at MIT seems especially low. What does not show up on the profile, except in an oblique way, is the acceptance rate to Harvard and Stanford. The profile only lists schools which have accepted 10 or more students. These two schools have decided there are not even 10 students at arguably the best school in the US who have earned a spot. It is more than a safe bet that the acceptance rate for these two schools from TJ is under 10%. For those who want evidence of how much demographics and geography and other factors play into admission at the most selective colleges, they need look no further than this.Many people would be surprised to learn that attending a school like this while providing a huge advantage to getting in to many top schools dos not help that much when it comes to Harvard, Princeton or Stanford. Of course, these colleges do not have an exact quota, but they will reach a point (and it is pretty consistent each year) where anyone below a certain gpa and a certain set of standardized scores on the SAT/ACT and AP exams is pretty much doomed if they are not hooked. To put it simply, non-hooked students at the most competitive secondary schools need to be at the top of the class even if the competition and academic accomplishments are, on average, far greater than at any non-magnet school. As a result, some students’ parents are choosing to keep their children from attending the magnet school; instead, they keep them in their neighborhood school in hoping that their children will be of the valedictorian who will get in instead of the person “only” in the top 5% of a school that has 150 National Merit Semifinalists. Some might call taking such a small number of TJ students a misguided policy on the part of the colleges. And many I hope would think not having a child attend a magnet school in the hopes of increasing the chances of him or her getting into an Ivy as a very bad idea.In addition, there is a very inconvenient truth that is getting a lot of attention in the media and in courtrooms. The vast majority of these students at magnet schools like TJ or Stuyvesant are, at least currently, Asian. As anyone who has read the headlines recently in the New York Times and elsewhere, there is a lawsuit against Harvard that is based on the study that Harvard itself carried out which concluded that the admission office discriminates against Asians. Opinion | Harvard Is Wrong That Asians Have Terrible PersonalitiesAt the same time, in New York, Mayor De Blasio has put forward a plan that would drastically reduce the number of Asians students who currently make up the vast majority of students at the 8 magnet schools. 75% of the students at Stuyvesant, the crown jewel of the NYC system, are Asian, even though they comprise just 15% of the overall NYC population. The new selection system will get rid of the standardized test currently used to select students and implement a percentage plan in which a set number of students automatically get in from every middle school in the city. Many have argued recently that making it more difficult for Asians, many of whom are low income --they have the largest percentage of low income students in New York City- is unjust. They spend time, money and effort to do well on the test. The test does not favor them in any way except that it rewards those who prepare for the test more than those who do not.Opinion | No Ethnic Group Owns Stuyvesant. All New Yorkers Do.I have been lucky enough to visit secondary schools around the country and the world. In most cases I have visited schools where the majority of students are motivated, the facilities are up to date, and the teachers excellent. But I have also visited schools in Appalachia, New York and other locations where fewer than 10% of the students will go on to college. In many cases I have sat in on classes and talked with students in groups or individually. There is what I would call an energy field in certain classes I have been in whether it be at one of the magnet schools in Shanghai or Singapore, or at Stuyvesant or TJ. The teachers expect students to be fully prepared and in almost all cases I have observed they are. They are focused and seem to enjoy the interaction between the teacher and their fellow students. When classes end and the hallways fill, there is an energy that is both powerful and intense in ways that I find unique and inspiring. Having students ask me questions from schools like this I come away humbled at the level of knowledge and achievement these students have already attained.On the other hand. I don't know that I have been treated so well as when I visited schools in Appalachia. People all say hi and thank me for making the effort to get there. But inside the classes many students are not engaged; some have their heads down on their desks and are asleep. I can’t really blame them. Most have already decided college is not for them and they are headed to the military or trade school. They are essentially passing time until graduation.The same can be said of students I have met at some Inner-city schools. Too often, these students are living in environments where they do not have access up to date text books or lab equipment. Some call schools like these warehouses as students do not get a chance to learn much but are kept off the streets. Nevertheless, gangs recruit heavily at these schools and these organizations have a much higher “enrollment rate” than colleges and universities. My brother taught in these schools for 25 years and his heart was broken many times when bright students gave up learning because they had to choose a gang or worry about their safety and their family.The disparities between schools exists on virtually every level, whether economic, pedagogical, cultural. One’s life choices are opened or limited by what kind of secondary school one attends. Every year there are calls for leveling the playing field and for improving education at most schools, but very little has changed in the past several generations to close the achievement gaps or create schools that can dramatically improve the chances of most low-income students.For example, If Mayor De Blasio’s New York plan is adopted, more under-represented students will likely have a chance to get the opportunity to attend the top colleges and universities. It will be similar in the same way that the under-represented scholarship students at the boarding schools and private schools will have the many of the top colleges in the US recruiting them. This will, however, come at a price of keeping out low income Asian students whose parents are recent immigrants. But most in education at secondary schools and colleges think this is a worthwhile trade off. The courts may not agree. (I will be addressing this issue in a future blog entry.) And neither does the current President. President Trump and his administration have just sent a message to schools across the US which reverses direction from the Obama administration with respect to affirmative action: “The Trump administration said Tuesday that it was abandoning Obama administration policies that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses, signaling that the administration will champion race-blind admissions standards.”Trump Officials Reverse Obama’s Policy on Affirmative Action in SchoolsGiven all the politics and legal issues, things are uncertain when it comes to how and if affirmative action will survive these current challenges. If it does not, then there will be little change in terms of the composition of magnet high schools, but it is likely that in an effort to still have a diverse student body magnet high schools and selective colleges may adopt percentage plans similar to the one proposed by Major De Blasio or the one currently in place in Texas. Secondary school students in Texas who are in the top 6% of their school are automatically admitted to University of Texas. This helps to create opportunities for students of color since there are still de facto segregation at many schools there (and around the US). Taking a certain percentage at the top of the class of all high schools will mean that underrepresented students will still get in to selective state universities even if affirmative action gets struck down. This, in effect, is what the NYC city plan is about but getting rid of the test and replacing it with a percentage while the plan will dramatically alter the racial composition, it will come at the cost of pushing out low income Asian students who have done nothing wrong except for perhaps out testing everyone else.As I mentioned above, the atmosphere of a magnet school is one that mirrors the atmosphere of highly selective colleges and universities. There are very few slackers, and all have high aspirations. While this increases stress levels it also creates an environment that the alumni of Stuyvesant underscore in defending keeping the admission to the school the way it is. If the school admits students who are, for example, two years behind in terms of mathematics courses the school will have to design a two tiered system of classes and have to re-allocate already limited resources.To sum up, at long last, attending a wonderful secondary school will prepare students for success better than attending a school beset by budget woes and weak facilities and underpaid and overworked teachers. This much is obvious.But it is also true that what group one belongs to within different schools will determine a great deal when it comes time for colleges to pick students. As a parent I would always pick the best school that a child could go to and thrive in. Even if they did not get into a top ranked school they would still have the skills and the atmosphere that would foster a love of learning. Studies show that students with high grades and testing do well in life regardless of whether they attend a top 20 school.

The Indian education system.First of all, I want to establish the fact that I am indeed part Indian, and I have studied in India for about a year (I don’t live there anymore).Now, let’s talk about all that’s wrong with how we’re learning.Discouraging personal expressionWhilst there’s nothing wrong with having a uniform rule, it’s not okay to take freedom of expression away from students who are in their learning phase: in which, they’ll not only learn about the world, but about themselves as well. Growing up, people should be allowed to experiment with different styles, interests, personas, etc. without being narrowed down into what the school sees as appropriate simply because it ‘distracts’ them from their academics.Most Indian schools forbid students to come to school with their hair dyed a different colour, their nails painted, or with their coloured eye lenses[1]; which has a side affect of those students beginning to perceive people who do choose to express themselves in a different way as ‘foreign’ or ‘attention seeking’. In fact, some schools even go to the extent of asking students to wear a separate hairstyle based on their genders (normally, girls have to wear plaits and boys have to have very short hair) - which not only discourages individuality, but also reinforces societal gender norms, which needs to be de-normalized in this day and age.Lack of sex-edMost public, and even private, schools restrain students from interacting with the opposite gender: and if they do, they are either looked down at, or rumored to be dating. The prime cause of our sky-high sexual assault statistics root from the lack of sexual knowledge and basic respect for one another, besides one’s gender identity. Topics like sex, or even anything with that undertone, will be muted from by the school, due to their intentions of hiding that discussion from them.[2]Normally, by the time a person is in high school (or in India, what would be known as classes 8–12 I think), they would have experienced hormonal changes, and females would have started their periods. Knowledge on topics such as consent (whether it is for sexual interactions or not), sexual desires, pornography (and it’s many risks) contraception, STDs, asexuality and menstruation are crucial for not only a safer India, but better citizens in general.Apart from sex-ed, we also need discussions on the various sexualities and gender identities a person can possibly have. Asking students to respect other people’s form of expression (whether that be a male wearing makeup or a female wearing pants), and preferences regarding relationship and romance is just basic knowledge. Introducing the concept of transgender people, non-binaries, gender fluidity, etc. will help students who have been closeted feel more connected and accepted as well. The LGBTQ community already faces a huge hassle in India for things like basic human rights, and it’s about time the new generation makes things better for them and for everyone else too.[3]Shaming diverse interestsWhy do Indians opt for medicine? - Times of IndiaGap years, non-academic interests and the arts are the most shamed things in the Indian education system today. While some don’t believe in passion and dreams, others do: and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no real purpose of making a child believe that the only way one can get somewhere in life is by following the steps everyone else takes: but guess what? That’s exactly what the Indian education system does.Gap years allow people to figure out what they truly want in life; not wanting to go to college isn’t what people who can’t do mathematics want, it’s what people who don’t see their interests in educational institutes want and lastly, arts is a subject like any other, which often even requires way more work than it is credited for, so why look down at it? Wanting to be anything other than a doctor, engineer or banker needs to be normalized in the Indian education system, because as other parts of our economy begin to sprout, a new range of requirements will enter our daily lives. At that point in time, a whole school filled with doctor-wannabes is not going to get us anywhere.Solley focusing on marksMarks are important. In some cases, it does reflect your knowledge on a topic, and aids in bettering yourself. But, it shouldn’t be the only factor to consider.Marks may not always be able to adequately capture the ability to identify problems, critically evaluate alternatives and suggest appropriate solutions.[4]A grade doesn’t define you, but the Indian education system acts as if it does. They guilt trip you to the point that you begin believing that the number on the paper determines your entire life. The sad fact is, most of these subjects won’t show up in reality, so what’s the point in focusing on the fact that you don’t possess in depth knowledge on double differentiation, when you should be learning how to do taxes instead? The Indian education is known for defining students and their abilities based on the score thet get on their test, which ultimatly leads their students to do the same. Given that their higher education institutions also select students based on the mark they recieve during their final year, it’s very difficult to come out of that backward minded mindset.Ignorance of mental healthIndia accounts for one of the highest amount of suicidal deaths, across the entire world.According to the statistics by the NCRB, which functions under the Union Home Ministry, the suicide rate in cities (13.9 per cent) was higher as compared to all-India suicide rate (10.4 per cent) in 2019.[5]Peer pressure, bullying, parental toxicity, family problems and other personal issues have all substantially contributed to this.[6]The amount of people depressed in India are rising, day by day. Each student works hard, studies hard, puts everything aside to reach their goal - and then earns a whopping 97%, which just wasn’t enough for their admission in IIT. The cut off mark not only cut off their chances, but ultimately their reasons to be alive - because in the end, that’s what the school tells us: if you can’t graduate college and get a job, you are a failure.Indian schools need to start playing a role in ensuring healthy mental states for their students. Instead of guilt tripping when one gets a low mark or disrespects a teacher out of anger and frustration, it would be beneficial to have school therapists, who advocate the importance of setting ones physical health and mental health as a priority. Most of our country looks at mental illnesses as a ‘western’ influence and forgets to acknowledge the intensity in which it can possibly affect someone’s life, especially the youths’.Internalized colourism, homophobia, misogyny, religious discrimination, etc.Fair and Lovely still exists to this day.[7] Their ads are very easy to find on national TV: there are arguably a good amount of Indians who’ve seen this, and in some cases, believed it (the ideology of fair skin being equivalent to a beautiful feature). Schools in India don’t aim to help stop this issue. Apart from the caste and colourist issue, there is also the religious discrimination. Personal beliefs aren’t respected that much in India - if a child chooses to believe in atheism instead of following the religion their parents follow, they won’t be taken as seriously as they should be. Instead of helping to combat bullying and discrimination by teaching children about equality and respecting one others differences, the system prefers to speak up only when there is a violation in dress code.Slut shaming is very common in Indian schools too; a student wearing a crop top would definitely be the victim of constant shame just because they choose to wear revealing clothes which they are comfortable in. This then contributes to rape. By making males feel as though they have the right to do whatever they please because a female wears something revealing, sexual assualt cases only rise.[8]Lack of respect for essential workers“Study hard, or else you’ll end up like that maid.”A common sentence known to aid in reinforcing the importance of not actually studying - but of following the easiest mean created by our economy: studying impractical things, graduating college, getting a job and being financially independent.The average family in India has an income of roughly about $1600.[9]Financial independence is a form of privilege, and only the best get this. The most secure lines to end up in such a position is: medicine, engineering and business management - narrowing down possible majors for a collasal percentage of our population.Essential workers are the most underprivileged, underpaid population of India. While in other first world countries, a Macdonalds worker will have a car of their own to drive back home, in India, that worker would have to either walk or catch the bus. Because of the poor image of essential workers in India (which is all backed by the lack of accurate resource distribution in our nation), the education system portrays those jobs as unattractive and non-ideal; unaware of the fact that essential workers, are named essential for a reason. Instead of feeding children the idea of working so they don’t end up as an essential worker, they should be fed the idea of working to help improve the life of that worker.The language barrierIndia’s official languages are Hindi and English. One of the reasons our country still has a foriegn language as a part of the list of it’s languages is because of the British colonization.But the massive intensity on learning subjects in English only results in blurring the focus on the actual course material.The reason behind India’s massive push for English is our belief that it is a quick-fix solution. A magic mantra. An only way out.[10]As such a large country, students come from all over the nation to learn. We have more than a hundred different languages spoken in India, and not everyone will have the skills (or even the will) to understand English, especially since it varies largely from our natural sanskrit based form of speaking. While it’s a good idea to have English as a second language for students, it’s unnecessary to keep course material in a foriegn language which creates a barrier for learning for most students. Instead of keeping the textbooks in English, and percieving English as a skill rather than a mere language, our education system needs to try to be as flexible as possible while conveying knowledge to different people. The language barrier has an immense impact on the students understanding, and, when things get much to difficult to understand, it only discourages them from actually wanting to learn.Edit 3: I’ve learnt that more than the colonization, the reason English is the language course material is in is because of the unfairness which would occur if it was in Hindi - for non-Hindi speakers (such as a large population of the South). However, I still believe that there is a better way to convey knowledge rather than doing so in such a foriegn language (which tends to be a barrier for a lot of people), so that point still stands.All in all, an education system should be personalized, flexible, accepting and relevant in order to actually create a substantial impact for the population it educates. The final goal for all these children should be aquiring life skills, such as logical problem solving, communicating, empathising and discovering, both to the various things in the world and to themselves as individuals. In the end, they need to utilize these skills in order to find themselves a position such that they are able to contribute to their respective societies passionately.What disgusts you?The fact that the Indian education system is nowhere near how it should be. The fact that our crime rates, depression rates, sexual assualt rates and poverty rates are only rising day by day - while the education system does nothing to eradicate this. The Indian education system has much to change. If they continue with their current ways, they are going to fail in producing a worthy generation, and essentially, a better India.(Image sources: Google)Edit 1: UNIFORM IS NOT THE PROBLEM. I said specifically that the problem is restricting students from painting their nails, dying their hair, putting on eye lenses, etc. That narrows down their expression WAY TOO MUCH, and is completely unrequired. Also, I am very well aware of the wage gap in India. In no way am I implying that students should have THAT much freedom, because that would obviously breed bullying.Edit 2: Some of y’all comment as if India has the lowest rape, depression and sexual assualt rates in the world. OPEN YOUR EYES. Our country needs to mold the youth better so that the new generation has a better mindset than the previous one. The education system needs to do better, that’s just that.— today is breezy.Footnotes[1] Homosexuality and India[2] 5 Facts About Sex Education in India | The Borgen Project[3] Homosexuality and India[4] Why good marks is not a measure of your skills that will actually help in life[5] Average 381 Suicides Daily In India In 2019: Data[6] One every hour: At 10,335, last year saw most student suicides in 25 years - Times of India[7] Fair and Lovely: Can renaming a fairness cream stop colourism?[8] Opinion | In India, Journalists Face Slut-Shaming and Rape Threats (Published 2018)[9] GNI per capita, Atlas method (current US$)[10] India’s obsession with English is depriving many children of a real education