Dive Brief:
- “Public school consultants” are now charging between $450-500 to help "anxious" upper-middle-class parents navigate urban public education for their children, a move they reportedly view as an economic alternative to enrolling kids in private school.
- One New York City-based consultant, Joyce Szuflita, has seen a total of 2,000 individual clients and gives public talks that thousands have attended.
- The underlying problem that leads to the wealthy using such boutique consultancy professionals, the Atlantic reports, is the fact that not all public schools are “great or a top choice” for parents privileged enough to get to decide.
Dive Insight:
It’s undeniable that navigating public education in a city like New York is confusing. It’s also true that all families want what’s best for their children, yet not all can afford certain kinds of help. The fact that public school consultants now exist to help those families who are wealthy enough to afford them certainly exacerbates the achievement gap between racially and economically diverse students.
The gap between upper-middle-class and low income students was defined recently in California as the state analyzed its latest Common Core test results, which found significant proficiency gaps. Wealthy students, for example, were more than twice as likely to score proficient than poor students.
According to George Bohrnstedt, an American Institutes for Research fellow who recently spoke to Education Week, part of the solution toward closing the gap is ensuring the neediest students have the best teachers or that teachers working with those students receive adequate, additional professional development.
