That was then.
- Local control of schools via elected school boards.
- Schools perceived they were serving their local population.
- Organized parent groups had influence via providing fundraising, volunteer hours.
- Individual parents had influence via endowment of foundations, scholarships, programs.

This is now.
- Local school boards may listen to the school board associations rather than to local parents.
- Schools perceive they are serving the higher levels of government and vying for greater shares of our tax dollars; National school ranking systems have changed evaluation criteria to closing the achievement gap and closing the excellence gap.
- Extensive student databases reveal demographics including ethnicity and SES of students along with student performance.
- FERPA has been reinterpreted to provide broad access to student data; Student data is collected from birth through college and into the workforce; It is a longitudinal study. For those interested in further information, here are a few possible resources to explore: The Dawning Database: Does the Common Core Lead to National Data Collection?, infographic here. The U.S. Department of Education's factsheet on "Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems", dated July 2009, and available online at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/slds/factsheet.html, may also be of interest. (also archived on the WayBack Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20210809095250/https://www2.ed.gov/programs/slds/factsheet.html )
- How well a student does in school is considered to be reflective of how well served the student was in the public school system, as determined by demographic statistic.
- Meanwhile parents of gifted students, as a whole, do not attest to their children being well-served with appropriate challenge in curriculum and pacing; rather parents tend to share stories in which gifted students, required to continuously review material learned years ago (so they do not advance and maintain a persistent achievement gap), develop poor coping mechanisms such as hiding their gifts/talents, underachievement, anxiety, perfectionism, fixed mindset, dropping out... to which the public school system has largely responded by pathologizing the gifted as a whole.

The antidote?
- Remembering that students are individuals, not demographic statistics.
- The aim of "schooling" should be a personally meaningful education for individuals, not the contrivance of statistics.