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I'm curious about this topic. A colleague at work is looking around to move to a better town in our local area for the high school. She has some time since her kids are young, but they just spent ~30k on doing their whole outside (fence, landscaping, etc). That's quite an investment and it's unlikely they'll ever make the money back given the housing market. This got me thinking and I've been doing a bit of research since we're trying to start our own family. We live in a nice town, as does my colleague, but the public school rankings are pretty dismal (100s). I asked her about private school and she said the higher property taxes in a better town would bring more bang for the buck in the long run.
Then, what if the kid just goes to the less than stellar public school, but has parents that make a conscious effort to involve them in academic extracurricular programs?
So, to the parents on this board, what have been your experiences with these kinds of decisions?
The difference in school performance isn't attributable as much to the amount of money spent per kid (alluding to the higher property taxes in the original post) as much as it is to the quality of students. Schools in the inner city and suburbs are about the same in terms of teacher quality, resources, and money spent per child. The difference lies in the students and their peers themselves: Are their parents more educated? Is there more stability in their homes? Are there less ESL kids in the class?
There's a genetic factor too. Smart parents have smart kids. Smart parents make more money. Smart parents are more likely to be college educated. More income means more expensive housing. There's a strong correlation between smart/high income/nice neighborhoods with high performing schools.
So, yes, parents can somewhat compensate for a poor performing schools by extra help (for example tutoring) but their kids are still "hanging out" kids who might not have the same values (college is a given, sports over drugs, extracurricular activities over gangs, science over shop).
If you have one kid and you live in a bad school zone, then springing for private school (hopefully secular with no religion) makes sense. If you have many kids, then spring for the more expensive house in the nicer neighborhood with good schools.
The difference in school performance isn't attributable as much to the amount of money spent per kid (alluding to the higher property taxes in the original post) as much as it is the quality of students. Schools in the inner city and suburbs are about the same in terms of teacher quality, resources, and money spent per child. The difference lies in the students and their peers themselves: Are their parents more educated? Is there more stability in their homes? Are there less ESL kids in the class?
There's a genetic factor too. Smart parents have smart kids. Smart parents make more money. More money means more expensive housing. There's a strong correlation between smart/high income/nice neighborhoods with high performing schools.
So, yes, parents can somewhat compensate for a poor performing schools by extra help but their kids are still "hanging out" kids who might not have the same values (college is a given, sports over drugs, extracurricular activities over gangs, science over shop).
If you have one kid and you live in a bad school zone, then springing for private school (hopefully secular with no religion). If you have many kids, then spring for the more expensive house in the nicer neighborhood with good schools.
Thank you. Very good points on all counts. I was peripherally considering quality of the other students, but you paint a clear picture here.
One thing about my town is that it's difficult to research the demographics based on town sections. Framingham is the biggest town in the US (almost a city), but is divided up. I'm in North Framingham, which is a great area, but south Framingham is pretty trashy. Kids in the north area go to the north schools, etc. The south is much further away compared to some of the high end neighboring towns in my area (Sudbury, Weston, etc). It's hard to figure regarding parents, although, Framingham was just voted the 3rd tech town in the US. There are more scientists and computer geeks living here than in Cambridge, which I thought was interesting. So, maybe it's not too bad. Or maybe these parents are sending their kids to private schools.
I would also be interested in learning about private secular schools. I'll have to look into that.
People do it here all the time, chiefly because our urban school system has been stripped of accreditation. But it was occurring prior to that, as well, mainly because the urban districts were considered by many to be gang-infested and unsafe, and accordingly, not attracting and/or retaining the prime educators. Like many urban schools.
I'm an educator (private, secular school, but one that serves a very specific population), and a firm believer that parental teaching and how families promote education/learning has far more to do with student achievement than how a district is ranked. Brilliant kids come out of mediocre schools all the time, because there are other factors at play than just the schooling they receive. What goes on outside of school is more important than what goes on in school, ultimately.
That said, I would move if it meant providing safer schools for my children, if school violence was a concern.
The difference in school performance isn't attributable as much to the amount of money spent per kid (alluding to the higher property taxes in the original post) as much as it is to the quality of students. Schools in the inner city and suburbs are about the same in terms of teacher quality, resources, and money spent per child. The difference lies in the students and their peers themselves: Are their parents more educated? Is there more stability in their homes? Are there less ESL kids in the class?
There's a genetic factor too. Smart parents have smart kids. Smart parents make more money. Smart parents are more likely to be college educated. More income means more expensive housing. There's a strong correlation between smart/high income/nice neighborhoods with high performing schools.
So, yes, parents can somewhat compensate for a poor performing schools by extra help (for example tutoring) but their kids are still "hanging out" kids who might not have the same values (college is a given, sports over drugs, extracurricular activities over gangs, science over shop).
If you have one kid and you live in a bad school zone, then springing for private school (hopefully secular with no religion) makes sense. If you have many kids, then spring for the more expensive house in the nicer neighborhood with good schools.
I agree with this. The atmosphere where kids are learning is the most important factor. If most of your classemates don't care about school, drop out early, etc. the issues teachers will have to deal with through your school years will cut into the quality of education you receive. If your teacher spends half the class disciplining kids that don't want to be there, you are getting 1/2 of the instruction time that the same class is getting in a school where kids WANT to be there.
We have statewide open enrollment and it mainly gets used for kids that want a specific program at another school because academically, most of the schools here are very good. We get a lot of kids that open enroll into our high school, for example, for the outstanding band/music programs. Another high school near us had a lot of kids open enroll to play soccer or wrestle--heck they have kids move in from across the nation to wrestle at this school. When you don't have to worry about academics, because they are all great schools, it gives kids a lot of options and families don't have to move to get these options.
I'm curious about this topic. A colleague at work is looking around to move to a better town in our local area for the high school. She has some time since her kids are young, but they just spent ~30k on doing their whole outside (fence, landscaping, etc). That's quite an investment and it's unlikely they'll ever make the money back given the housing market. This got me thinking and I've been doing a bit of research since we're trying to start our own family. We live in a nice town, as does my colleague, but the public school rankings are pretty dismal (100s). I asked her about private school and she said the higher property taxes in a better town would bring more bang for the buck in the long run.
Then, what if the kid just goes to the less than stellar public school, but has parents that make a conscious effort to involve them in academic extracurricular programs?
So, to the parents on this board, what have been your experiences with these kinds of decisions?
As a teacher, I'd recommend moving to a better area. I've taught in two schools. One middle class and the other upper middle. The quality of students is night and day. The quality of your children's peers is very important. You can stack the deck WRT things like going to college, avoiding teen pregnancy, and working to get good grades. Peer pressure can do a world of good if it's the right kind of peer pressure and you stack the deck if you have your kids in a better school.
Dd#1 is doing much better since moving her to a better school. Dd#2 is that kid who just has a good head on her shoulders, chooses her friends well and will succeed no matter where you plant her so we've allowed her to stay in the local school so she can be with her friends but since she's on the honors track, it's kind of like being in a better school.
...what if the kid just goes to the less than stellar public school, but has parents that make a conscious effort to involve them in academic extracurricular programs?
I think it's an individual decision and you can't really foresee what a high school will be like ten years down the road. Nor do you know whether your kids will agree to the academic extracurriculars by the time they're teenagers. We live in a city with a high school deemed a "California Distinguished School" and heard about how great it was for years while our kids were in the elementary and middle schools here. The older they got, the more we knew that sending them to the public high school wasn't going to be a good fit. (Too big, too many budget cuts, too many kids who got into trouble from our neighborhood, etc.) Both our kids went to parochial high schools.
I think it's an individual decision and you can't really foresee what a high school will be like ten years down the road. Nor do you know whether your kids will agree to the academic extracurriculars by the time they're teenagers. We live in a city with a high school deemed a "California Distinguished School" and heard about how great it was for years while our kids were in the elementary and middle schools here. The older they got, the more we knew that sending them to the public high school wasn't going to be a good fit. (Too big, too many budget cuts, too many kids who got into trouble from our neighborhood, etc.) Both our kids went to parochial high schools.
True. There are considerations that will manifest only when the time comes. As far as what teens will or won't agree to, eh, that's a different issue all together. A parenting issue I imagine. I certainly have ideas of how I would like to manage things, but that's so far off. I don't have any kind of clarity with it.
One of my boys had a teacher that told me she was sorry for the extra research work she gave him. She said she did it because he had better books at home than the school library did. His reports gave more to the class than the other kids could.
It was a poor school. But because of what he got at home, he did well.
We were in a good school district, but because of population shifts, the districts were redrawn and we were dumped into a badly run school district. So if you move, make sure that you aren't near the edge of the district........And make sure that the children have additional access to books, activities, etc. outside of the school.
Even the best schools will sometimes have a bad teacher. The general make-up of the entire student body really determines the quality of the school.
Check into the open enrollment policies in your area as well. In Colorado, it is possible to live in one attendance area and apply to OE in a different attendance area, and even in a different district.
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