> If that’s a game changer what does that say about American K-8 math education?
American k-8 math education is a hot mess and the statistics have borne that out for years. Less than half of 8th graders rank "proficient" in math (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-student...).
> But it’s a few thousand dollars if that (as low as under $1,000) which is reachable to all but destitute families.
And you've hit the nail on the head.
https://www.healthmattersalexandria.org/demographicdata - the median household income for African American families in Alexandria is $55k / year. A thousand a month is 20% of income, only 10% less than is recommended for spending on rent. Private tutoring for African American families is like renting two apartments. For the median Asian-American family in Alexandria, that private tutoring is only about 10% of income. And, as a side note, the fact that the median breaks so differently between two racial demographics points to the interplay between race and class in the United States that has historically made issues like this so challenging to address. Programs designed to minimize class disparity can look like racial programs.
America's historical racial disparity is a hard problem to solve. People know what the outcomes are that they want, but "the pipeline is leaky and full of acid," as the saying goes. I'm not sure the solution is to bootstrap students who would otherwise miss the mark into magnet school by changing the selection criteria to cause the magnet school to more accurately reflect the local demographics around the school... But I understand the impulse to try, because honestly, I don't think anyone knows what will work.