Every time I have asked college students to reflect on the question of their high school preparation for college, there are two responses: “I could have done more research on my own, but I also wished that I had a person consistently there to assist me in my thought process.”

• Asked for his prospective career interest, the high school junior says he wants to become a doctor. He is doing poorly in science and has no inkling of the academic path needed to achieve his stated aspiration. Does his answer simply reflect a desire to please the inquiring adult with a high-achievement response or has he not been walked through the steps needed to become a doctor? Or perhaps he is a student in a low-expectation high school, where the prevailing view among the adults in the ranks of both leadership and teachers is, “keep the kids happy, pass them onto the next grade, help them walk with a high school diploma,” i.e., true academic preparation and in-depth guidance counseling do not take place for the majority of students. At best, they get directed to the Internet, to Google their way to impersonalized informational assistance.
• Asked about the diversity on his campus, the college representative cites the data in the school’s official report to the government agencies charged with the responsibility of collecting such information. Missing is any volunteered data on diversity within majors, within classrooms, in the cafeteria.
• Asked about his financial aid package for college, the student excitedly exclaims, “it covers the tuition at the public college I want to attend!” He does not separate the grant portion from the debt pieces in his reaction; he does not internalize the academic requirement for continuing to receive the school’s scholarship. He is simply happy to be accepted.
• Asked about his SAT results, the prospective collegian sheepishly indicates they were not too good, but not to worry, because the accepting school does not put much value on those numbers. Would that same college care if every single student it admitted had identical poor SAT scores—of course, and it would not put itself in that position. So the SAT level of the new student does mean something.
• Asked why his affluent family moved to a particular town, the student has no problem referring to what he has been told, the community’s exemplary school system. At no time do his parents conceptualize that they have exercised school choice; that term is reserved for financially challenged people in urban areas desperately trying to find a decent school for their children. To question the value-added of the affluent homeowner’s school system is to pull the curtain back on the price that he paid for the house, and that is something that people involved cannot abide. In urban America, there is no such quandary; education is typically poor and there is no connection to the asking prices of homes
• Asked about the seemingly high per student spending in depressed urban school systems, the analyst points out that the music, sports, camp experiences, tutoring and other add-ons which are directly paid for by affluent parents do not show up in the per capita data of the latter’s school systems.
• Asked about his excessive sugar consumption, the young person reacts blankly. There is no way to connect that dot with the onset of diabetes decades later.
• Asked about his growing involvement with curriculum design at community colleges, the corporate manager responsible for employee training explains it simply, “through better academic preparation, we hope to be able to avoid costs which we incur now because the skill set of incoming employees is substandard.”
• Asked about the lack of commitment by either company or employee, the response by one knowledgeable observer is succinct, “we are all consultants now.”
• Asked about the multiple cultural worlds in which the young Latino is typically involved, the analyst (borrowing from the Professors Osorio) lists the following duo: instrumental—for example, the functional requirements of being in corporate America; and expressive: the continued ability to be “natural” in the many decisions away from the job: dress, food, music, etc. In between is the awkward place, the locus of assimilation dynamics, aka pressure in many cases. .
• Asked what his well-known holistic program at rectifying a community’s ills can do for a student who has no academic strengths, no particular skill set, and no passion, the leader replies, “I don’t know.”
• Asked if it is true that mothers raise their daughters and love their sons, the young minority person is quiet and then responds, “there is a lot of truth in that statement.”
• Asked about the moral basis of the detail behind immigration laws, a respondent must either go mute or reply, “there is none.”
• Asked whether the generic dialogue about social, economic, and/or government policies can avoid having several participants sooner or later play the race card, the moderator reluctantly shakes his head sadly.

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