This touches on a bunch of issues. And there are a bunch of competing intrests. And almost nobody is interested in actual education. 1. There is a significant

This touches on a bunch of issues. And there are a bunch of competing intrests. And almost nobody is interested in actual education. 1. There is a significant interest in the US in destroying the public school system. The current iteration of this is "school choice", "school vouchers" or "charter schools". These schemes are all expensive ways to drain government coffers into private hands. This ball really got rolling when the Supreme Court decides that segregated schools couldn't get tax exempt status [1]. I'll just add that any supposed savings of charter schools are a lie. They're selective in students and don't have to deal with disabled children or children who otherwise need more attention. 2. Cutting public school funding to push "school choice" also serves the purpose of dismantling the government, the so-called "starving the beast" strategy of cutting funding and then using the resulting failures to justify further cuts; 3. The No Child Left Bhind Act under GW Bush is surprisingly not mentioned in this article but it greatly exacerbated this thin veneer of accountability. Fun fact: the NCLBA also provides the contact information of all graduating students to military recruiters; 4. The supposd meritocracy of grades (mentioned in the article) is a lie. Schools in wealtheri districts are better because they have more of a property tax base eg [2]. There's a reason people say explicit racial segregation was simply replaced by economic segregation. Addtionally, if you come from a more affluent background, you simply have more opportunities for extracurriculars, tutoring, SAT prep and so on. We have a useful example here. I've learned a little about how US medical education works and it's really interesting. To become a doctor you have to do a bunch of things that start with an undergraduate degree, do the MCATs, go to a 4 year medical school and then do a residency of some kind. Interspersed with this is the US Medical Licensing Exam ("USMLE") that takes place in several steps. USMLE has 3 Steps. Step 1 in 2nd year med school. Step 2 in 4th year and Step 3 typically in the intern (first) year of residency. Some years ago Step 1 went pass/fail instead of being actually graded. There were several arguments for this. A bad Step 1 score could be an issue with the residency match process and it's not necessarily indicative of how well you will do in residency or as a doctor. Anyway, what's the effect of this? It looks like the Step 1 score has been replaced by the prestige of your particular medical school. It's more social proof. The problem with this is the ranking of your medical school further exacerbates existing socioeconomic issues. It can be more expensive. Admission is harder and so your extracurriculars and, say, MCAT prep matters. In short, a well-intentioned effort to make something pass/fail has seemingly just baked in existing inequity. This is a difficult problem. [1]: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3527&context=faculty_scholarship https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art... [2]: https://www.tiktok.com/@carmeldeca/video/7197937009938156842?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/@carmeldeca/video/7197937009938156842...