If the United States could somehow guarantee poor people a
fair shot at the American dream through shifting education policies alone, then perhaps we wouldn't have
to feel so damn bad about inequality — about low tax rates and loopholes that benefit the superrich and prevent us from expanding
access to childcare and food stamps; about
private primary and secondary
schools that cost as much annually as an Ivy League college, and provide similar benefits; about moving
to a different neighborhood, or
to the suburbs,
to avoid sending our children
to school with kids who are not like them.