I agree with you; I think the solution is to try to create a floor of opportunity that is accessible to 99.9+% of people.
There are going to be kids who learn to sail, ski, fly, surf, or take ocean-crossing vacations 4x per year. You don’t gain as much from trimming the top as you do from putting in a solid floor. (It also costs a lot to put in an effective floor.)
I agree. The problem I think is a lot of the discussion is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Specifically, the baby being a reasonable level of equality that gives everyone a chance to do well, and the bath water being the reality thar people still do badly regardless, and many supposedly ‘good enough’ opportunities are actually just well disguised shittiness/scams. Like poorly run school districts in many areas, which tend to correlate with a lot of minorities.
In that case, I'd argue the internet is sufficient.
Any motivated individual can now access not just average content for each grade-level, but in most cases even better content than is taught in most schools.
One could learn to code or even learn a specialized trade with the right websites/youtube videos.
There are going to be kids who learn to sail, ski, fly, surf, or take ocean-crossing vacations 4x per year. You don’t gain as much from trimming the top as you do from putting in a solid floor. (It also costs a lot to put in an effective floor.)