Interesting conversation. I think that there are many kids with GREAT potential in K, who are not served by the public schools. They fall so far behind their peers who are fortunate enough to be in a school system that is based on high achievement. Sadly, at some point, they can never keep up. My oldest recently spoke to me about this. My kiddo said, “at some point, there is no way a kid who has not attended the after school programs, camps, music and art lessons and all the rest can catch up. You can see it in the classes”. Even with very smart kids in a highly selective boarding school with great resources ( and that is high school) they just cannot work at the elite level. It made me pause.
So the achievement gap is real even if the basic intelligence gap is not. That means that kids without a proper background will be in the same selective college class as someone who has been groomed for this environment basically since birth.
Some folks talk about it being possible to close the gap. I would like to believe this was true. Sadly, even several decades ago when I attended an Ivy league college this was not the case. Some who came from some great inner city schools could do it ( again because they had the proper background). Others never closed the gap. They remained socially and to some degree economically disenfranchised from the college. They graduated but they were never able to fully take advantage of the resources the school provided, since, they were focused on catching up all four years.
We need to think of ways to address achievement gaps in primary school. One way is to reintroduce gifted programs. Another is to have specialized after school instruction at low, no cost. By the time a kid gets to high school it’s already pretty late. By college, it’s almost impossible to bridge this gap. Tutoring isn’t enough. Easy majors aren’t enough. So the student in this position is at a real disadvantage.