MIRACLE CHILDREN

How a “school’s deception illuminated the persistence of a racial caste system.”

Two New York Times reporters invite readers to look under the hood, so to speak, of a small private school in Louisiana that placed poor Black children into the country’s top schools. Relying on dozens of interviews with students, parents, and staff who were willing to go on the record, the authors share many troublesome findings about the T.M. Landry College Prep, founded by Tracey and Mike Landry. “In texts and whispered exchanges, students talked about the abuse they suffered at T.M. Landry,” the authors write. “But they still did not tell authorities or other adults. They assumed this was the price they had to pay for a shot at the kind of life they thought was out of reach.” The book tells of a host of enablers, including college admissions staff—who were eager to believe “tales of black suffering” that fit a clichéd narrative—and the state of Louisiana, which has no mechanism for oversight of private schools. In a clear and nuanced account, the authors dig deep into the schools’ red flags. They describe the tension between the ideal of personal responsibility and the structural inequities in American society. The playing field of college admissions is ripe for manipulation: “The most elite institutions admit a tiny fraction of applicants, making the pressure to exaggerate, embellish, lie, and cheat on college applications relatively common.” This explains why so many families chose to stick with the program even after the authors published their exposé in the Times. The authors write, “What Mike and Tracey gave [the students] was a set of connections and a time-tested playbook, created in service of the American aristocracy, for acceptance to the Ivy League.” In other words, the school promised results in a Byzantine system that the families knew they couldn’t navigate on their own.

An alarming story of a private school that achieved improbable outcomes.