[WillPostForFood]

100% agree - the real intent here is to reduce the achievement gap, and the real effect is to increase it. High achieving wealthy parents make sure their kids get math outside of school. The kids who lose are the smart, poorer kids who would have thrived and advanced given the challenge.

[User23]

Plenty of extremely poor Chinese immigrants scrimp and save every penny to pay for top notch tutoring for their children. This isn't really about wealth, it's about culture and ability.

[WillPostForFood]

I half agree. Chinese immigrants strongly value education, and on average, have more inherent ability. So many overcome the disadvantage of being poor. That doesn't mean that the average poor kid isn't at a disadvantage, and that the smart poor kid is hurt by removing advanced math courses. That smart poor kid may not be getting the support at home like a Chinese immigrant, so support at school is all they are going to get.

[linuxftw]

Why not send them to private school then? Or is top-notch tutoring only available outside of a traditional school? In which case, why have a traditional school model at all?

[magic_beans]

> Why not send them to private school then

Top-notch tutoring still costs less than 4 or 8 years of private school tuition.

[tlear]

It is not only that, if you parent is a successful engineer, businessman or whatever. Not only they will hire tutors if needed they can often teach kids themselves.

I learned more math from my dad who has PhD in physics then from all of my teachers and tutors combined.

One of the reason home schooling works so well. It is much easier to teach few kids you care about then whole classroom of the ones you don’t.