The really big money comes in through the capital campaigns. These are fundraising events dedicated to financing a major school project: paving the locker rooms with gold coins, annexing Slovakia, putting out a hit on a rival headmaster. The campaign gets some cockamamie name—“Imagine the Future” or “Quid Pro Quo”—and lasts several years. There has never in history been a private-school family that slid in and out of the institution without overlapping with one of these campaigns.

Caitlin Flanagan, Private Schools Are Indefensible.

I wish they hadn’t chosen that title. She’s writing about the super-exclusive Independent Schools like Phillips Exeter and Sidwell Friends.

I decided I needn’t offer my shekels to the Intlochen Academy for the Arts (no affiliation except sometimes attending concerts when on vacation up there) when I read their annual report and saw the number of $100,000 donors and $1,000 donors.