“…Both views are also predicated on an empirically weak foundation, leaving us bereft of useful information needed for resolving the moral quandary. For instance, there are ample reasons to question their belief concerning how the social capital of more privileged children will benefit less privileged children, given the evidence concerning (a) the heavily tracked institutional design of most schools beyond the primary years (Merry and Boterman 2020; Domina et al, 2017; Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993; Van der Werfhorst 2019); (b) the homophily effect among peers (Angrist and Lang, 2004; Fiel, 2013; McPherson et al, 2001); (c) how privileged parents game the system 4 by insisting on their own child being advantaged (Calarco, 2018; Dumont et al, 2019; Saatcioglu and Skrtic, 2019), particularly when the school is mixed in terms of socioeconomic status and ethnicity/race (Diette et al, 2021; Francis and Darity, 2021; Lewis and Diamond, 2015; Merry and Agirdag, 2023); and finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, given (d) what we know about the somewhat limited impact on inequity that schools have relative to what occurs outside of schools, specifically in families and communities (Downey, 2020; Weininger et al, 2015). In the twenty-first century, this also includes a burgeoning and global multi-billion dollar shadow education 5 industry (Entrich, 2020; Zhang and Bray, 2020), which serves to reinforce – rather than mitigate – existing structural inequalities, largely because the educational services are strictly available to those able to pay.…”