Hmmm. Well I was contemplating this.
It seems that the nature of things is that most of us probably made better grades than our parents in more rigorous curricula in hs and college than our parents.
Yet, our ability to live a better life than our parents hasn't necessarily risen concomitantly. Like, I make more money than my parents did, in inflation-adjusted dollars , but my mom was stay-at-home and they purposely moved to an "elite" school district. Things I'm not sure I could or would do today and that are objectively harder than they were in 1963.
A lot of that is just the result of equity, sans affirmative action. "Regular" white people got opportunities previously reserved for "elite" white people. And then that opportunity started spreading further. White women started doing things previously reserved for white men. And then other "minorities," with a boost from the Civil Rights Act, and yes, affirmative action.
That's progress, but is it "progressive" or just sort of the natural order of things absent a cultural and economic revanchism like we're currently experiencing.