In 1966, a group of Boston-area parents and administrators created a busing program called METCO to help desegregate schools. They thought of it as a quick fix to a passing problem. But the problem hasn’t passed, and METCO isn’t enough to fix it.
A focus on highly selective schools obscures the experience of the vast majority of American undergraduates.
Thea Hunter was a promising, brilliant scholar. And then she got trapped in academia’s permanent underclass.
Class accounts are a way for incoming freshmen to make friends, find roommates, and suss out colleges before fall.
Several schools forgo or have abandoned them, but seem to be faring just fine.
Suicides among people affected by shootings are, unfortunately, a familiar phenomenon—and support for survivors often misunderstands the nature of their grief.
America’s devotion to the practice stems in part from the fact that it’s what today’s parents and teachers grew up with themselves.
Success in forensics is about making yourself vulnerable. Several former competitors accuse a prominent coach of exploiting that vulnerability to sexually harass students.
The allegedly fraudster parents in the cheating scandal exploited extra-time accommodations. Could slowing down tests for everyone make them fairer?
The president’s much-anticipated directive doesn’t do much.
Year after year, Stuyvesant High has abysmal enrollment rates for black and Latino students. But the debate over admissions reform is brimming with misunderstandings.
Just because some people allegedly cheated the system doesn’t mean the system is defensible.
Admissions officers are in no position to evaluate the truthfulness of the applications they review.
Seven black students were accepted to Stuyvesant High School this year. Five years ago, the number was exactly the same.
Unwritten rules underlie all of elite-university life—and students who don’t come from a wealthy background have a hard time navigating them.
Even as selective schools opened their doors to a wider array of applicants in the early 20th century, they put policies in place to maintain the advantages of wealthy white students.
And in that, they’re no different from all the other people who can’t see the hidden forces working in their favor.
Anecdotes from the Department of Justice’s indictment show the lengths that parents will go to buy their kids’ way into selective colleges.
If selective colleges were less selective, there would be less incentive to cheat to get in.
“These mothers and fathers live in a world in which the mark of good parenting is substantially tied to where one’s children are admitted.”