Many parents strive mightily to get their children into high achieving high schools. A high achieving school (or HAS) is defined as one where students score high on standardized tests and a high percentage go on to selective colleges. Such striving occurs through various means. Some move to a wealthy suburban community and pay a premium on housing because the schools there are highly rated. Some pay high tuition to send their child to a high achieving private school. Some hire tutors to help their kids get test scores that will permit admission to an academically selective public school. All these cost money, so, to a considerable extent, the striving is concentrated among parents with higher-than-median wealth.
What these parents don’t know is that they may be setting their kids up for failure. Not academic failure but life failure. If parents knew the facts and behaved reasonably, they would deliberately avoid an HAS for their kids. They would move out of that high-achievement school district. They would use the money otherwise spent on tutoring or tuitions for more enjoyable family pursuits. Here I present some of those facts, as documented by many research studies, especially studies conducted over the past two decades by Suniya Luthar and her colleagues. [Sadly, Professor Luthar passed away in March 2023, at a too-young age.]