Changes in Elite Education in the United States

Abstract

The reader might rightly object that this high school is hardly representative of elite education more generally. I have chosen a rather unique case here to make a point. For the simple fact of the matter is that almost overwhelmingly elite families and elite schools are tightly coupled. There are two reasons for this. First, residential segregation in America means that wealthy families rarely live anywhere but near other wealthy families (Massey and Denton 1993). And so their local schools are both well funded, and relatively economically homogeneous. The second is that most elite schools are private. While many offer financial aid, in general such private schools have a considerable financial barrier to entry, servicing the families of wealthier Americans. About half the families who send their children to Harvard, for example, have incomes above $200,000 (well within the top 5 percent of American families, to say nothing of the global population the school draws upon). And yet, while many schools are overwhelmingly populated with wealthy families, this does not necessarily make such schools elite, likeHarvard. Often these second-or third-tier wealthy schools lack academic, cultural, or historic prestige. It is neither enough to be highly selective, nor extremely rich to be an elite school. Instead, the definition of our object lies elsewhere.