Today, I had the opportunity to take Andrew (my mini me and hockey player, pre his tryout weekend) to the ACE scholarship luncheon in Denver, aptly represented by a tale of two cities over two days. Yesterday, it was 85 F and beautiful. Today, it is snowing and the city expects a minimum of 4” of snow overnight. Similarly, all major cities in North America are a tale of two cities. Depending on the zip code your parents can afford to buy a house, so too goes your opportunity for education. I am a huge supporter of public school but not as it exists today, without choice and with the Teacher’s union. Step one. Break it entirely and fire every administrator that isn’t a teacher would be a start. To me, that you need a masters at up to $70,000 a year to teach is insane. Teacher’s should be like military service. Enroll and it’s free, but you work for 10 years minimum. And … that I wouldn’t be able to teach a high school business course in favor of a 27 year old C-student with $100,000 in student loans is insane. I digress.
Both Ben and Andrew spent elementary and middle school in public school pre COVID. I went to public school. But, I just also acknowledge I live in a neighborhood precisely BECAUSE the public schools are good. The houses are more expensive, therefore the families who live there are more affluent, and that is most likely based on the income outcomes of college vs. no college degrees. And those with college degrees highly value education. Ergo, wealth reinforces college. But relatedly, families who highly value education have, on average, less kids therefore more resources to spend on the fewer kids they do have. And thus, the cycle that starts with valuing and achieving education leads to kids with higher education and better opportunities. That is the American way, for good or for bad, and that is what ACE scholarships is trying to influence.
The program itself is a need based scholarship for low income students to get to go to Private schools. 4 years ago when I attended for the first time and saw Walter Isaacson speak, I remember thinking “this is dumb” but I learned a lot about Leonardo Da Vinci. As “my kids” went to public school, it seemed like the wrong answer to “fixing public schools is sending poor kids to private schools” and not fixing the route of the problem. It was a convenient answer as my kids didn’t bear the brunt of societies failure.
By the second year, when Andre Agassi spoke, I started to get it. I owned a house in a district with the best elementary school in the state. I lived there specifically so that I didn’t have to pay the private tuition and it translated the equivalent into house price, which has a direct ROI. Yes, I am that calculated and it would always be my recommendation to families considering the $32,000/year for private school tuition: put it in your house and lock in the long term appreciation. But, even at the time, I acknowledged that not every family could get the mortgage required to buy an expensive house in a good school district. The only alternative for them? An ACE scholarship.
By this year, and after two years of grocery store workers being “essential” and teachers being “optional” in public schools, I fully got it. Both my children have been “in person” since September 2020. Masks and testing annoyances aside, their school experience were as usual. They lost 2 months of school, and resumed their trajectory (with a big swing to the Republican ideal of less government and anti-woke) while true public school kids have been nowhere near as fortunate. Like it or not, that is 100% a function of wealth. So when Condoleezza Rice took the stage, I was fully bought into what ACE was selling as a means to opportunity (not equity) to those of lesser wealth.
One final point on the day before watching Andrew exploit one of the many opportunities he is afforded as a result of his circumstance: hockey. Condoleezza is a black Ph.D who is incredibly thoughtful and well spoken. The best share of the day? “My grandparents would roll in their grave to see participation trophies for soccer. Competition teaches you what you are good at and what you aren’t. And when someone said “Oh, but you are a black woman that must be so hard…” they said “Work twice as hard. If you work twice as hard you will have more success. Full stop.” I agree. And education is the only thing we can proactively address to narrow the opportunity gap. I am appreciative of the invite from John and Jill Obering and especially for the opportunity to bring Andrew to remind him that hard work, medals only for winning, and being color blind when it comes to merit is the only way forward.
Good thoughts, David. Not everybody gets a cookie in life. When everybody does, cookies begin to lose their value. The effort to remove the merit incentive in our society, from grade school on into the work place is pernicious. You can't level up. Leveling will always go in the opposite direction. If you have a few extra minutes read, or reread the "Marching Morons," by Cyril Kornbluth. The parallels to modern society are striking. I think in some respects we may be worse of than the world he created. Cheers!
Congrats to Andrew my friend!