Private schools in the United States are independently funded, selective admissions institutions that are often regarded as a better quality of education than their public counterparts. And this public perception makes sense: with an average yearly ticket price of $11,004, it’s understandable that students and their families are paying for high quality teachers, curriculum, and college counseling.
The public perception of private schools is that they are elite, high-quality institutions with ample resources, academic rigor, and high-achieving student bodies that may be difficult to find at a local public school.
But the seemingly amazing opportunities available to private school students are often overshadowed by the dangerous social, racial, and socioeconomic environments they uphold. The high tuition costs and selective admissions processes of private schools in the United States inherently create social environments that are entirely incongruent with the socioeconomic, racial, and cultural diversity that exists in the United States. It is because of these reasons that the private school system has become one of many toxic “bubbles” in our country; subsequently warping student’s understanding of the world outside of their small, selective environment.
In a 2017 article for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson highlighted the many social bubbles that exist in our country, from jobs to neighborhoods, commenting, “Living in bubbles is the natural state of affairs for human beings. People seek out similarities in their marriages, workplaces, neighborhoods, and peer groups. The preferred sociological term is “homophily”—similarity breeds affection—and the implications are not all positive.”
The same can be said for private schools: the implications are not all positive. In fact, they can be quite detrimental to the way student’s developing brains begin to form perceptions about themselves and the people around them. When a private school “bubble” is created, it inevitably creates predominantly white, wealthy concentrated communities– contorting student’s views of the actual racial and socioeconomic diversity that exists in our country. And since private schools are perceived by the public as holding a higher quality of education than public schools, they inevitably reinforce the deeply-rooted systemic issues and hierarchies that exist in our society.
Take The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, California, for example. The K-12, $43,860 per year school “is a dynamic, nurturing learning community committed to equity and inclusion,” according to their mission statement. A quick search around the school’s website would lure any prospective student’s family in: 40+ clubs and organizations, 20 after school program classes offered every semester, and even a “makerspace” that includes 3 silkscreens, 10 glueguns, and a virtual reality system. The school also dedicates a section of their website to Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives, with pages dedicated to “Becoming an Anti-Racist Community” and a “Social Justice Symposia”. I mean, what parent wouldn’t want all of these resources for their child? And while the school features their 1:1 iPad to student ratio on their website, there’s absolutely no feature of the racial breakdown of the Buckley student body.
Perhaps it’s because it’s not something they want to feature.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a data collection site under the U.S. Department of Education, the Buckley School had a total of 830 K-12 students during the 2017-2018 school year. Of those students, 584 were white– with 25 Black students and 38 Hispanic students.
That means that Black and Hispanic students made up .075% of the student body.
Less than 5 miles away from Buckley is North Hollywood High School, a public school within the Los Angeles Unified School District. During the 2016-2017 school year, North Hollywood High had a total student body of 2,522 students. Of this student population, 424 were white, 92 were Black, and 1718 were Hispanic. I recognize it is difficult to compare Buckley to North Hollywood High when the size of the student bodies are so different, but for perspective, Black and Hispanic students made up 71.7% of their student population.
So, this begs the question– how can a private school positively execute programs dedicated to “Becoming an Anti-Racist” when the conversation is quite literally dominated by white voices?
The answer is obvious: it can’t. Students will never be able to learn about the deeply ingrained, systemic issues that exist in our country without sharing classrooms with students of different races, socioeconomic statuses, and cultural backgrounds.
This was part of the reason why Lisa Johnson, a mother with children in the Los Angeles private school system, decided to create Private School Village. Created as a way to bring together Black families in various Los Angeles private schools, Private School Village aims to organize events and gatherings to foster a sense of community for students who may otherwise feel disconnected. As their website states, “this fortunate yet sometimes marginalized group experiences a disjointed sense of community in the private school setting which impacts the ability to fully reach potential. Without a sense of belonging in the school community, there are often behavioral, psychological, and/or academic issues that can permeate life.”
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It is no secret that high school, no matter public or private, California or rural Oklahoma, big or small– can be a difficult time in many student’s lives. The age at which most teens attend high school occurs at this super-charged, hormonal, pubescent age, where students are not only forced to grapple with personal bodily changes, but also friend groups and the stereotypical highschool social popularity hierarchy (sorry, but this exists at every school…). But on top of this, highschool represents the last step of federally mandated education, which creates general anxiety about post highschool graduation plans. Whether students plan on immediately entering the working world, or going to college, or even taking some time off to figure out exactly what they want to do, this period of decision-making and choice can often create heightened stress.
This stress is, in my opinion, par-the-course for most highschools students today– no matter where or what high school they attend. But for the prestigious private school system, the environment of competition– the (at times) cut-throat nature of SAT scores, grades, extracurriculars, and involvement are all in an effort to make students the best possible candidates for college. And for many, only a handful of a few, elite, hyper-selective universities will suffice. So what happens when a student fails chemistry freshman year? Or gets an SAT score below what their ideal “dream” school typically accepts?
In the October 2020 edition of Los Angeles Magazine, Max Kutner writes about the toxic culture of grades at The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks. He explains that in March of 2010, “[the head of the preparatory school] had called in the teachers to discuss why the grades they gave their students were lower than those at Harvard-Westlake and Viewpoint, two other L.A. private schools. He passed around photocopies of grade distributions. To the teachers, it felt like an interrogation.”
Kutner continued, writing, “[the head of school] told [teachers] to raise each student’s grade by half a letter.”
The practice of grade inflation is just one of the ways in which the culture of private school academics and college preparation have created a toxic environment for students. For some students, according to a July 2019 CBS This Morning Newscast, the false elements went beyond grade inflation to include blatant lying about a student’s race; with the underlying belief that a student would have a better chance of admission if they identified as an under-represented minority.
As Kutner further explains in the Los Angeles Magazine article, private school parents, particularly in Los Angeles, have a “transactional mindset”. They believe that they high price tag associated with attending an elite private school should guarantee high grades and SAT scores. And if this is not something that a student achieves on their own, parents would become involved. Kutner writes:
“And when their children’s grades turned out to be too low for those institutions, parents become unsatisfied customers. ‘Those families who have substantial financial resources or perceived power and influence may not have much experience with being told no,’ Emmi Harward, executive director of the Association of College Counselors of Independent Schools, says.”
So, some private school parents are not only aware of grade inflation, but encourage it. As a reader, you may be thinking, “okay, well, it’s shady to have grade inflation, but how bad really is it? If teachers are increasing the grades of all of their students with an equal hand, then what’s the harm?”
The harm, (aside from potential jail time as highlighted in the 2019 College Admissions Scandal), is huge, and only feeds into the toxic, financially-motivated, racially-unbalanced private school system. Something that may seem harmless in the moment– changing a student’s grade on their transcript, for example, can be an element that feeds systemic racism by presenting greater disadvantages for those students who attend public schools, which tend to include much more racial diversity than their private counterparts. Grade inflation, as a concept, is generally easier to “get away with” in a private school setting, for the sheer reason that independent schools are not subject to the same regulations and restrictions posed on public schools. Private school administrators, because they are independently funded, have much more autonomy over what courses they offer and teach, whereas public schools often have to follow a curriculum that is consistent with other public schools.
To demonstrate the dangers of grade inflation, here’s a hypothetical example. Say a selective college receives two applications, one from student A and one from student B. Student A is from a well-known private school and has a 3.9 GPA (despite one grade on their transcript being altered from a B- to an A-). Student B is from a public school and has a 3.5 GPA with no altered grades, and while they struggled in a biology course sophomore year and received a C+, they enrolled in a summer school course to reinforce their knowledge, which earned them a B+ in their junior year biology class the next year. Based on grades alone, and unaware of the grade inflation existing on Student A’s transcript, an elite college may be more inclined to accept Student A as they have “stronger” grades. This hypothetical scenario serves to demonstrate that grade inflation has the potential to effect so much more than a singular student. Grade inflation, even just at one school, creates a dangerous domino effect that can exaggerate the already existing inequalities in the U.S. education system.
“College-admissions officers rank grades as the most important element when considering applications, annual surveys show. And families consider grades the most reliable and accurate indicator of how their children are performing, according to a 2019 report. As Americans confront racial inequality, advocates for students of color and low-income students say those pupils have the most to lose from grade inflation.”
Max Kutner, The ‘A’ List, Los Angeles Magazine. Oct. 2020
Education is the most powerful tool that exists in our world. Through education, teachers are not only able to impart academic knowledge on growing minds, but students are able to interact with classmates in a social environment. However, when we create private schools that are dominated by students of the same race and class, students will inevitably believe that the world outside their private school is just like the world inside it. And when few students of color are involved in vital conversations about race, society, and class within private schools, students walk away with warped perceptions of our world and flawed understandings.
Social progress will only be made when our education system is actually representative of our country. Until then, private schools will just exist as microcosms that reinforce the detrimental societal issues in our country.