&gt; A few strangely poor-yet-viable kids will move from very bad schools to slightly bad schools (nice but insignificant) while all the bright promising kids will end up in less-effective schools<p>I may have overstated my position. I know there are some intractable kids that can&#x27;t be educated. I just don&#x27;t think the success of parents is a good measure for us to be using here. Not because it isn&#x27;t a good one. It is. But because it disincentives anyone without such parents from even bothering to try. They will always be measured as the child of a not-successful person. Many such &quot;poor-yet-viable&quot; kids become indistinguishable from the intractable kids very quickly when they become aware of such attitudes. It is far more destructive. We only need an elite in proportion to scarcity. It is in fact <i>only</i> when we can provide an even playing field that the elite can be <i>elite</i> and not merely aristocratic.