The school I'm at is prestigious to the point where kids have discussed which horses they want to bring with them to france during their summer vacations. Lots of parents think because their kids are successful later on, that it's because these school are giving them something others are not, but it's really because their kids benefit from their parent's preexisting networks and nepotism. I was actually talking to a teacher at my job earlier today about finding out how kids of color, and black kids especially, are being supported now that we're aiming for a 40% non-white enrollment rate where we're at. She said a lot of the slots are going to hapa kids. They're also bringing in lots of kids on subsidized pricing, but once they get here I don't really see them getting the real support they need as I don't think a majority of the teachers really understand the environments that some of these kids could be coming from. The one good thing is that we have a strong secondary homework support staff along with a tracking program that works to get the lower income kids into good highschools and works hard to find lots of scholarships for them. I still feel that these lower income kids are getting heavily shafted by being enrolled here. Someone made a good point in another thread that people should at least wait until highschool to get their kids into private schooling.
Here's a good article on what's happening where I'm at which I forwarded to the teacher I was talking to
NPR Choice page