Quite the Advantage

After discussing in class about the main factors that show a strong correlation with test scores, I came across this article that discussed a “so-called perfect” school called Avenue, located in New York. Within Avenue, as early as nursery school, kids are immersed into either the language of Mandarin or Spanish. By kindergarten, all kids are given an I-Pad, and eventually these students will get the opportunity to study for a semester in either Sao, Beijing, or any other of the twenty campuses the school has set up around the world.

As I was reading about this extraordinary curriculum, I was thinking of how this advanced education, costing one $43,000 in tuition, will obviously show a positive correlation with test scores. These students are automatically being given such a high advantage in the world. However, what about the rest of the children in America that cannot afford this elite education? Does the rest of the country have no other option but to just fall behind?

All of this concentration of effort and money, 70 billion dollars, is being put into this one school yet, it is only directed for such a negligible number of people. And according to the authors of “The Manufactured Crisis”, “the great majority of schooling standards have not improved over the past twenty-five years”. As such, why does our country choose to create this one perfect school for such a select number of people, instead of trying to spread the effort in trying to improve the overall schooling systems?