It’s very much true that wealthy parents supplement their kids to keep them challenged and leveling up, so to say. What you’re describing re: AP classes is for high school students. While the parent comment may have been referring to high school, I imagine they meant elementary and middle school level. Students with support (read: challenged to learn at their level and not slowed down to the pace of the average student) are able to take more AP courses because they are ready at a younger age. They take AP Calculus in grade 9 or 10. My son, for instance, is taking algebra 1 as a 6th grader because we started doing math lessons at home for fun the last couple years. In terms of AP science classes, it’s typically hard to take all of them if you’re not doing outside lessons due to the nature of prerequisites. And, back to the point of extra lessons (which only wealthy parents can afford) I’ve had a few 8th graders (learning programming with me starting in grade 7) who scored 5s on the AP computer science A exam. Often students can’t get to that AP level without additional support prior to high school.

The reason parents look for extra lessons is because most schools can’t challenge students because they group too many students of varying intelligence and interest level into the same class. My public school district does 1 on 1 mentors for students, but only if they score higher than ~144 on an IQ test in grade 2 or 3, which is ridiculous, but these students do get that extra challenge and support with no extra cost. Schools need smaller cohorts to best support kids of all levels, and we’ll continue to fail the majority of kids until we reorganize our schools.

I understand that wealthy parents are going to show up in these stats far more often than non-wealthy. I take umbrage at the statement it's only the wealthy. It has turned into effectively only for the wealthy due to the focus on equity over the past 20+ years as we've torn down any sort of public programs for these students.

My advanced class placement started far earlier than high school. 5th grade is when I recall being put into the advanced track along with others of demonstrated ability. I'd say from my memory maybe 1/3rd of those students could be described as wealthy by any sort of the word. But they'd be more middle class vs. working class in retrospect. They just seemed wealthy in comparison at the time.

The one thing that had near 100% correlation was highly involved parents - even if they were single moms who never had time to be directly involved. All the kids were held accountable at home. I never had outside tutoring, and few of my peers did either. It was all in-school education, where we were removed from normal classes for a few subjects but otherwise part of our grade level for everything else like social studies or gym. Plenty of time spent with said friends at various houses doing homework together though.

I totally agree this needs to happen at a very young age. I was able to test out of the public high school in 10th grade due to being tracked the way I was in grade school and junior high. High school due to no advanced courses being available was an utter waste of time. Those programs that got me there have now been long-removed in the name of equity. This is the one political topic I will speak out on, since it's outright evil what we are doing kids in the name of fairness.

You really couldn't come up with a better plan to cripple a society than what we are doing to public education.

I really don't think that you and I disagree—I'm talking about the way that things are for my kid who's about to go into elementary school, not the way that things were when we were growing up.

We're well off enough to provide what he needs, but we're also painfully aware that the public school system is not going to and that most people don't have the means to do what we can do for him. I agree that that's a new trend and not something that has always been true of public education in the US.

As many countries demonstrated, wealth does not buy good genes. Talented kids stand out, as long as we have a decent public school system, which places a high academic standard and holds teachers accountable. That's how East-European countries and Asian countries produce high-quality students.