@SlitheyTove, I did and I do.
I live in NYS so I know the disparity that exists between the wealthy and poor public school districts, never mind the much larger gap between the poor public and wealthy privates. NYS communities are already experiencing deep resentment because of the disparity in how our tax dollars are allocated for education. Throwing the educational opportunities wealthy families can afford in the face of the children of the poor, for any reason, without providing them the resources to access those opportunities is offensive.
How does letting poor 10th graders shadow rich private school students for a few classes help them? Did someone assume they didn’t know they were poor or that they could aspire to something better? The University Heights students academic records were nearly halfway completed before they visited the private school. Most were not going to earn any merit awards for high stats, their parents weren’t suddenly going to be able to afford to pay for college any more than they could before the visit, and the chances of winning a full ride Posse Scholarship (about 4% in 2014) weren’t going to increase as a result. There’s nothing the rich students could learn about the poor from this misguided exercise that they couldn’t learn by shadowing the UH students at their school, working in a soup kitchen, or volunteering in the poorer neighborhoods of the Bronx.
It’s telling to me that the private high school teacher “remembers” the day the UH girl (who was so upset during the visit to Fieldston) was awarded a full scholarship to a private college in VT, but says she never went because she “probably just got scared.” She didn’t go to the private college because she was never awarded a scholarship there. However, reinvent history if it makes you feel better. Some people are just clueless.