As more public schools are opting for an online-only start to the year, families are turning to "micro schools"--hiring a teacher to instruct a few children from several different families--to meet their educational needs. However, the rise of micro schooling has rekindled an old debate about the propriety of permitting educational inequalities that exacerbate economic inequalities. No doubt wealthy parents are better positioned to provide their children with micro schooling just as they are better positioned to provide their children with private schooling in general. But, the argument goes, these educational advantages give children an unfair edge in competitions for spots at prestigious colleges and high-paying, high-status jobs. An article published at Aeon summarizes the worry: "For many parents, enrolling their children in private school is
primarily about giving them an edge over their peers. And that, it turns
out, is incompatible with the public good . . . If status is the aim, there must be losers – lots
of them. After all, if we are all roughly the same, there is no
difference upon which to base unequal distribution of social and
economic rewards."
This is a fair worry but I doubt that it's a decisive objection to micro schooling or private schooling as such. One reason is that even the full equalization of educational opportunities would probably not do much to equalize opportunity in general; instead, it would simply shift parental status-seeking toward other credentials. Yale has to select among applicants somehow--if it cannot use differential educational credentials to do so, it must turn to some other differentiating characteristic. (By analogy, if all NFL prospects run an identical 40 yard dash, teams must turn to some other characteristic to decide who to draft.)
If wealthy parents are unable to give their children a leg up in Ivy League admissions by buying them better schooling, they have an incentive to buy other opportunities for their children that will distinguish them from other applicants. As I write elsewhere:
Wealthy parents can, of course, more easily afford to buy their children SAT prep classes, time at golf camp to improve their odds of an athletic scholarship, and so on. Thus, even total educational equalization is unlikely to make much of a difference with respect to overall equality of opportunity.
Lastly, even if you have lingering worries about educational inequalities, it is seems as though the appropriate response is simply to expand the educational opportunities of the disadvantaged. The problem of inadequate access to micro schools could be solved by distributing educational dollars directly to families to spend on a micro school if that is a better option for their children, just as we address the problem of food insecurity by allocating food stamps to families to use as they see fit.