Most "woke" advocacy hardly favors "realizing the full potential of [our] population". Back here in the real world, the "woke" folks are the ones pushing for deeply flawed educational approaches like "whole language" reading (aka don't actually teach kids to read by explaining the rules that link written and spoken English, viz. phonics; just give them fully-formed written texts and let them figure it out!) and "reform math" (aka don't actually teach kids the traditional, efficient algorithms for computing simple arithmetical operations, just have them do a lot of fuzzy "mental math" and "discovering their inner knowledge" without even caring whether they're anywhere near a correct approach. They'll figure it out eventually!). These approaches are being pushed as a result of mindless cargo-culting and politicking, and are doing quite a bit of damage to our educational system. The basic attitude of not caring about the actual outcomes of what you're teaching persists all the way through K12, and explains quite a bit of how far U.S. primary and secondary schooling underachieves compared to the rest of the developed world.

When a potentially "bright" kid has been subjected to 12 years of such deeply-flawed, even outright nonsensical cargo-cult schooling, how can we even expect her to be interested in college?