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Following your point through to a conclusion, the only way to improve educational outcomes would be for everyone to just become better people, and for the count

Following your point through to a conclusion, the only way to improve educational outcomes would be for everyone to just become better people, and for the country to actually start respecting academic achievement instead of sneering at it. Which would be great - but is not very actionable. Some parents just don't have the capacity to lift up their children, and it is not the child's fault they were born to less-than-ideal patents. So, our aspiration should always be to give those children the best shot. Is this as economically advantageous as filtering kids early, with the help of parental spending as a proxy for "caring that the child succeeds"? Probably not, but the latter model feels pretty dystopian to me.

mytailorisrich 4y ago
> So, our aspiration should always be to give those children the best shot Yes, but you do that by actually helping them, not by hitting those who do well or already have the environment to support them. You actually help them by changing schools' culture, and investing so as to cut class sizes and to extend school hours.
- Moissanite 4y ago
  If people could be trusted to be perfectly fair and honest, then I would agree. In reality, having met plenty of privately-educated individuals, I am confident their outcomes are achievable without private schooling; none of them were great minds who had been unlocked by access to better teaching. What they did have - in abundance - was an unreasonable and unfair advantage when it comes to networking with rich people. The problem with private education has nothing to do with the difference in teaching quality and everything to do with social mobility and nepotism.