<p>Sometimes, I think this is a no-win kind of debate. Talk about elite schools giving scholarships to low income students, and someone will say it’s a drop in the bucket and the elite schools should instead invest in k-12 education. That’s where the roots of the problems lie (quite right). But then comes along someone like Tony Jack who managed to overcome poverty and do well enough to be admitted into a private school; and then, on the one hand the elite school is described as cherry picking and on the other, his achievement is disparaged because he has a supportive mother.
The logical continuation of such an argument would be for the US to pour massive funds into fixing social ills from poverty to broken families, but I wonder how many would want to go there?</p>