She claims the school never helped her get work in her field. And she says employers don’t value the degree in the way she thought they would.

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From a Liberal California High School to Trump’s Inner Circle

Lisa Mascaro | LA Times

How the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, as the city is sometimes jokingly called, gave rise to the skinny-suited man now at Donald Trump’s side is as much a story about one teen’s intellectual tenacity as it is about the backlash to liberalism at the turn of the millennium.

The culturally sensitive environment at [Santa Monica High School] infuriated and ultimately shaped [Stephen] Miller, 31, now a senior advisor to Trump who is helping to draft this week’s inaugural address and will have a coveted West Wing office.

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Finding the American Dream in the Reality of Chicago’s Poorest Neighborhoods

Linda Lutton | WBEZ Chicago

A powerful idea sits at the heart of our country’s identity: No matter who you are, no matter where you are from, every American deserves an equal chance to get ahead.

It’s why public schools were created. They’re meant to be the great equalizer.

Except, too often, they are not. …

I wanted to see up close what poverty slings at a school like that. I wanted to better understand the mystery of why so many schools in poor neighborhoods fail to do what we ask of them.

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The Colleges Where the 1 Percent Outnumber the Bottom 60 Percent

Upshot | The New York Times

Students at elite colleges are even richer than experts realized, according to a new study based on millions of anonymous tax filings and tuition records.

At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League—Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown—more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent. …

Colleges often promote their role in helping poorer students rise in life, and their commitments to affordability. But some elite colleges have focused more on being affordable to low-income families than on expanding access. “Free tuition only helps if you can get in,” said Danny Yagan, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the authors of the study.

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Can Betsy DeVos Transform From Lobbyist to Policymaker?

Jonathan A. Knee | The Atlantic

To date, DeVos’s activities have primarily been as a lobbyist through the organization she founded, the nonprofit American Federation for Children. The organization is committed to “creating an education revolution” by promoting vouchers, charter schools, and other “pro-choice” initiatives at the state level.

Success as education secretary depends not only on the ability to manage the sprawling education bureaucracy but also on one’s flexibility in responding to the practical constraints he or she will inevitably confront when attempting to apply broad theories. If DeVos’s overall educational political theory is not a legitimate source of opposition, an unwillingness to modify tactics in the face of new facts is.