No, if you push them they will eventually admit that an individual can better their circumstances through their own efforts.

I didn't say leftists say you can't better themselves, but that they hate the idea of it. They know people can better themselves, but they hate it when people do that because it removes the necessity of the collective.

I remember a study celebrating and advocating for a new method of teaching math to achieve greater equity, but when you dug down into its body you found that it hadn't improved the performance of the low achievers, rather it had dramatically reduced the performance of the high and normal achievers.

This has also been the case with linguistics. It's been a while, but IF I remember correctly it was phonetics vs whole word, where one (I THINK phonetics) was better for both men and women but showed a greater benefit for men while the other would be worse for both but more equal. Guess which one was adopted as part of the curriculum

And I wouldn't be surprised if that new "math" method was Common Core.