With a Conservative majority in the Supreme Court, an upcoming case regarding Affirmative Action is expected to effectively end this program. The complaint about Affirmative Action is that race shouldn’t be a criteria for admission into college. Merit should be the only criteria and merit is a cold clinical calculation. Merit is based on grades, test scores, and extra-curricular activities. There is no question who the deserving students are if merit is the measurement. Since race has nothing to do with merit, it shouldn’t be factored into any decision for admission into schools. These opponents would have you believe that we live in a fair world.
We don’t. For example: Judy has wealthy parents who can pay for her to attend an expensive private school with a low student to teacher ratio while Johnny lives with his poor mother and has to attend an urban public school with a high teacher to student ratio — do they receive the same education when they compete for admission at colleges years later. They studied the same subjects for the same twelve years. They took the same ACT/SAT tests. All of these are verifiable facts so then merit is the only fair way to make these decisions.
But this isn’t the case. Some wealthy parents are paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000 to give their children a leg up in their education. Of course the money advantage is greater than just better schools with better teachers. Wealthy parents can also afford tutors when their child needs extra help, several attempts at ACT/SAT until the child gets a better score, coaching on how to take ACT/SAT tests to insure better scores, their children’s extra curricular activities, and, most importantly, are comfortable paying the basic necessities of life for their children. The average American worker’s salary is $58, 260 so you can deduce from that not many parents can afford this particular advantage. Yet no one complains about this unfairness.
Well, you say, life is unfair. There is always going to be rich and poor. The rich will always have more money than the poor. There is nothing we can do about it.
Right. But then you are accepting wealth as an acceptable unfairness while railing against another unfairness — race. Having more money is no more merit than a person’s race. The wealthy child just was born into the right family. Doesn’t the extra money their parents spent on them diminish the achievements of those wealthy private school students? I mean, won’t they spend their whole lives wondering if they actually deserved their success or did their parents buy it for them? Poor things will never know the truth.
Merit is a meaningless concept when parents can spend $60,000 on their child’s education. Why bother spending that money if you can get the same education in an urban public school? That is a lot of money to spend for the same result. But, of course, wealthy parents spend this extra money because they know they are going to get a return on their investment. Their kids will get a much better education.
This better education gives them even more chances in life. Unsurprisingly many of the 70 schools on the list of the most expensive high schools are also known as feeder schools for Ivy League colleges. You know the Ivy League — the colleges of Presidents, Senators, Supreme Court Judges and CEO’s. These schools send between 10 % to 37% of their students to the Ivy League. Imagine that 70 feeder schools, almost all of them pricey private schools, supply the Ivy League with the students who then become the future leaders of the country. Well worth the $60,000 yearly price if you got it. There is nothing wrong with that. I get it, you want the best for your children.
On the other hand, it is more than a little disingenuous to complain about Affirmative Action when you have the money to get the best education while less financially endowed parents must live with public schools. Public schools, by the way, that wealthy people wouldn’t send their own children to. The present system of education is so unfair that nobody questions parents moving to richer school districts or sending their kids to private schools, yet little effort is made to improve the public school system. Which actually shows real interest in fairness.
Mind Stewing, Fingers Typing 
My mother is on the admission board for a top medical school. Their policy is that anybody who had to endure “hardship” to attain their accomplishments gets a 30% bump in weighting their combined GPA and Med school exam scores. That bump means hardship students always have the highest scores and hence are always admitted, leaving fewer spaces for non-hardship students. Every member of the board gets to interpret “hardship” however they like. This could be a refugee from a war-torn country. Or growing up homeless or with a disability. Everybody agrees on that. However “hardship,” like beauty, is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. My mother told me about one applicant who claimed hardship due to race, saying he faced a lifetime of discrimination, despite living in one of the wealthiest areas of town, going to an elite private school, with one parent as a judge and another as a doctor. My mother did not believe race alone proved hardship and declined to give him the 30% bump. Board members do not have the ability to give someone a smaller bump like 5 or 10%. It’s 30% or nothing. The result is that all board members agree on admitting some hardship cases, many of which may include an aspect of race but are not solely race-based, and then argue with each other about the remaining spots.
I don’t know what the right answer is here so maybe a heated debate among a bunch of the smartest, most accomplished doctors from that med school comes close. I suspect the strongest applicants will find a place somewhere even if not at this specific school. But that may be cold comfort to a candidate with a high GPA, and good medical school scores who nonetheless is not admitted to a top school.
I think you are correct about high performers having a back up school and probably a good one at that. I don’t think there is an easy answer and this is whole idea of fairness is impossible. What bothers me is the worry is confined to race. Money is also an issue. It gives an unfair advantage to more wealthy students.