The reporters’ Miracle Children exposes abuses at T.M. Landry, a Louisiana prep school once widely acclaimed for helping Black students get into elite colleges.
What motivated you to expand your 2018 New York Times investigation of T.M. Landry into a book?
Green: Our job as newspaper reporters was to distill it to the scandal: children were being abused. But there were also huge implications for the higher education system and society writ large that we were only able to touch on. And so many families had risked so much to tell their stories. Their journeys needed more space.
Benner: In a newspaper article, it’s almost impossible not to just lump people together as representatives of a larger point. We wanted to give them their individuality back, because part of what was happening at T.M. Landry was that their identities were being erased for a set of cultural touchpoints and stereotypes that T.M. Landry thought would appeal to college admissions officials.
What do you think T.M. Landry’s mistreatment of Black students and deception of top-tier college admissions reveal about the U.S. education system?
Green: It reveals that there has been this very contractual, transactional relationship between educational institutions and families in this country who don’t have the means to buy their way into the gates of opportunity. We expect Black children to trade their dignity for opportunity.
Benner: Everybody is forced to use everything they have in this very cutthroat game, whether it’s using wealth like the Varsity Blues scandal or, like at T.M. Landry, students being asked to trade in their dignity because what they “had” was their race.
Did anything in your research surprise you?
Benner: So much. Feeder schools [high schools given preference by college admissions officials] were really interesting to learn more about. I remember when I got to college, I noticed that a large portion of my classmates had all seemingly come from 10 different schools. It struck me even then that there was this completely separate educational economy that catered to these folks.
Green: Learning how much of what we revered about education and reform was so detrimental. Like affirmative action—the very roots of it being to benefit white men. That was a discovery that readers will be taken aback by. With this book, it’s like, you think you know, but you have no idea.
What do you hope readers take away from the book?
Benner: I hope people who influence how we create a workforce are encouraged to find ways to get people economic opportunities without going to college. As long as you get one shot and that shot is college, everyone is perversely incentivized to game the system.
Green: It’s very important to me that people come away understanding that Black children don’t have to be broken to be valuable.
