Yeah, no, fool.
In a high school gifted enrichment class called G.L.O.R.Y (Greater Learning Opportunities for Resourceful Youth), I studied Latin and Greek root words of English words as preparation for the college entrance exam.
I'm good at taking tests, in part because I was taught how to test well. That class had something like ten people in it from all four grades, 9th through 12th, and I was something like one of four 10th graders, I think.
I ended up STAR student, which means I had the highest SAT score (plus top 10 percent grade point average) of my graduating class. One of the other three was one of the two students "above" me, making me the #3 student of my graduating class.
I was taught tricks for how to do well on that test to optimize my chances of getting a good score, qualifying for any college that interested me and having the opportunity to try to reach my full potential because I was already doing well enough in school that the system was betting that investing in me as a student would pay off for society.
Years later, I learned a lot about things like IQ tests due to participating on TAGMAX, a gifted homeschooling list, and talking with some of the industry insiders for gifted assessment and gifted education on a regular basis. One consequence of that is that when someone posted an online IQ test to Cyburbia, I didn't take it particularly seriously.
Cyburbia routinely posted stupid "tests" as conversation starters, like "What kind of dog are you?" I felt this was equally silly because I full well knew an IQ test is a useful assessment tool in the hands of a professional but some test posted to the internet was not meaningful assessment and never would be.
I initially didn't bother to take the test and just participated in the conversation because I viewed it as a conversation starter and knew a lot about IQ tests. So I was sharing what I knew, to be chatty and sociable.
And people started getting really CRANKY about my "attack" on what smarty pants they wanted to believe they were. So in a snit, I took it and scored a 145 and lectured them "Like I said, it probably ONLY goes to 145, so anyone scoring a 145 has ceilinged the test and probably has an IQ above that...etc etc...AND my score is the highest score here, so which is it?":
1. Your test is wrong and stupid like I said it was and I cannot possibly be the smartest person here.
2. Or your test is very important and I'm the smartest person here so you should defer to my brilliant opinion that your test is wrong and stupid.
This didn't exactly win me friends on Cyburbia. I then copied and pasted it to TAGMAX and tried to remove personal information identifying the forum in question and failed because I'm medically handicapped and missed something and some people there really enjoyed my screed.
But my concerns run deeper than "The smarty pants kids get taught tricks for taking college entrance exams that the other kids aren't taught." and began when I was in 8th grade in an incident touched on HERE:
That's the point at which I concluded I'm not necessarily inherently smarter than anyone else. I knew what it was because my high school drop-out father did the cryptoquote in the newspaper every single day. This kid had no idea where to start and she bitched at me about "cheating" for telling him it was a letter-substitution puzzle so he had some hope of succeeding.
And it runs deeper than what I stated there because not only was English my first language but his second language and not only was I exposed to letter-substitution puzzles daily, I grew up in the 'burbs, the daughter of an older man retired from the military who had 75 percent of the cost of that house in the bank when he bought it.
I grew up with a vegetable garden in the backyard and an extremely well-stocked pantry with a full-time homemaker mother cooking big meals from scratch and access to excellent medical care etc etc etc etc and my Hispanic friend was from a poor family.
So WHEN the poorest people in your country have an adequate supply of adequately clean water for every household and adequate nutrition and we have eradicated third world diseases like HIV and schistosomiasis and their physical health is on par with you over privileged people attending Oxford and they have ready access to abundant reading materials and so forth, THEN we can try to debate the difference it makes to spend more on education per pupil.
Because MY oldest son attended an award-winning public school in a college town where ALL public schools got their pick of qualified teachers desperately fighting over a handful of jobs AND it was in a poor neighborhood such that the school had a high percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch.
For my son, this was the ideal public school situation because he's twice exceptional and it gave him access to enlightened programs such as permission to go to the library on his own every single day and get two new books if he brought back the old ones and it's where I went once a week for four weeks for parental education for dealing with difficult kids.
The library policy helped him learn to read fluently. He was in second grade and checking out illustrated works aimed at higher grade levels once he learned not all books are drivel.
1. It was one of the few neighborhood schools lefts in the city.
Neighborhood schools are where almost all the kids live within walking distance of the school. Studies show neighborhood schools do better than schools with a high percentage of bused in students.
2. There was high parental involvement.
Studies show that high parental involvement matters more than per pupil educational expenditures.
Studies show that middle class kids thrive because both parents make choices that prioritize quality of life. They make it a priority to be financially successful enough to provide adequately for their children while still having time for their kids.
Studies show that you see as much drug use and parental neglect in upper class neighborhoods as in the ghetto.
As my mother always said, green covers up a world of sins. Your upper class kids may be getting sheepskins from impressive colleges but some bought their papers rather than learning to write well and some got in because daddy made a phone call.
Upper class kids getting the Looking Good answers and well-paid jobs in high numbers doesn't mean they are actually well educated.
The entire world knows Donald Trump rigged the election and is a blithering idiot running the US into the ground. And you, good sir whoever the heck you are, are repeating this idiocy that wealthy kids are all well educated by private schools.
Schools who may not wish to admit the truth to either parents or the world that they curve the grade, that billionaires donate a new wing so little Johnny gets an A, that when the people paying your bills are very rich and powerful, educating their pain in the ass over privileged brats isn't actually your highest priority.
And no one wants an investigative reporter publicizing the fact that the sheepskins from those expensive private schools are not actually proof that little Johnny has a world class education. Not little Johnny, not his rich father and not the school.
But we know there's a veritable industry in bought papers -- you need money to buy papers, poor kids actually have to write their own -- and I used to have a bitchy hobby of taking apart the arguments of people with PhDs in online forums.
Sheepskin are credentials and they are worth big bucks. But credentials and education aren't the same thing.