>I'd need to talk about a specific instance, but no, in this case, I was talking about the kinds of help that Sotomayor had along the way that got her into a good secondary school, which led her to a good college, etc. Unfortunately, the way our society is set up, the kids who most often have someone looking out for them are the ones who start out with more. So making sure that the kids who come from less have some people on their side, watching for opportunities and smoothing their way, is really important.
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>I've heard some of that from others (including my wife, who taught)...and I've also heard the opposite....that a # of public schools are devoting so much attention to the less fortunate, that potentially gifted and talented kids are lost in the shuffle.

In an ideal system, the ratio of adults to kids would be high enough that no kids would be lost in the shuffle, not even those who are trying to hide. But we're not willing to fund that system.

One thing I have seen make a difference is mentoring programs that match an adult (either a teacher or a volunteer) with a kid. But usually the kids need to be squeaky wheels to get matched, since there are far fewer mentors than kids.

In our family, mentoring has happened informally more than once. I'm sure I've written here about Solomon's friend who we (and other families) helped along. She now has a master's in Library Science and is working. But this kid was definitely a squeaky wheel--she knew she needed people and she sought them out.

My brother and his wife have mentored a girl who was the daughter of their housecleaner (I think). Last year, she became the first in her family to graduate from high school and just finished her first year of college. In high school, she got to do medical research with a nationally known researcher. This is actually a great example of what we need to be doing, because on the surface, this kid would have been just another poor Hispanic kid, who might or might not have even finished high school. Because someone saw potential and stepped in and smoothed a lot of obstacles (some with the kid, some with the system), she's on her way to success. My brother also has two adopted daughters whose life paths are substantially different than what they were born to.

The bottom line is that every kid needs an adult advocate. In most functioning families, the parents do that (though in some, parents are too intimidated by the school to be effective at it). When parents can't or won't, we need a way to make sure that someone else does it.

Tamar