Exactly. The top boarding schools have a commitment to diversity of all kinds. They are FAR more diverse than wealthy suburban school districts!
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However, many public schools are not very diverse (SES and/or race/ethnicity) due to having small less diverse catchment areas (particularly at the primary school level, where schools tend to be smaller and more numerous).
Because school quality is often a big factor in people’s choice of where to live, school catchment areas can become stratified by SES as people with more money move into good school areas and price out those with less money.
Neighborhood schools can also be segregated by race/ethnicity if the neighborhoods are segregated by race/ethnicity.
Of course, private schools also can end up with less diversity, since paying tuition is one factor in attendance. Many are also religious, so there is self selection by religion.
How many of their students come from lower SES backgrounds, presumably attending on financial aid?
Absolutely - that’s why I gave New Trier as an example. Maybe on the more extreme side, but not by much.
With the wealthy boarding schools having endowments greater than $1 million per student, and a commitment to economic (and other) diversity they are VERY generous!
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That does mean that 63% of Hotchkiss students come from families that pay list price (about $73k boarding or $62k commuter for billed costs, according to Tuition & Payment Plans - High School Lakeville | Hotchkiss ). I.e. mostly from top ~5% income/wealth families.
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Yes, and many bring other kinds of diversity as well.
Not sure what your point is – these boarding schools are very similar to selective colleges in their make up. In any case they are far more diverse, ethnically, economically, geographically, athletically, etc, than a public school in a wealthy suburb like New Canaan, or Scarsdale.
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The point is that being more SES diverse than New Trier, New Canaan, Scarsdale, and the like is not exactly a high bar to clear – such a school can still be predominantly populated by the scions of the very top of the SES range with a sprinkling from the rest of the SES range.ll
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I would challenge you to show me that mythical selective, academically rigorous school with more diversity – diversity of all kinds, racial, economic, geographic, areas of excellence (star musicians, mathematicians, actors, debaters, writers, athletes etc). My point is such a school does not exist. Expecting a school to meet some imaginary standard of perfection is not really fair.
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That was definitely our experience when choosing our school plan.
Just given our values and what we considered acceptable in a school, for us there were a few imperfect but as good as we could reasonably get options. There were privates that did have some sort of funded commitment to diversity, including SES, although honestly I think they do better on ethnic and national origin diversity. And there were publics that had at least some SES diversity (although less ethnic and national origin diversity) thanks to the nature of their district.
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