Decatur housing was just featured on the Today show

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Originally Posted by MelanieJJones

I'm having deja vu. Could that have been a re-run? The same exact thing happened about 6 months ago, also featuring real estate in Decatur and bashing the schools. The "real estate expert" was then forced to apologize to the city and make some other remarks a few days later after everyone in the area complained. That would be strange for the same exact thing to be happening again so soon. However I was attacked on another message board for stating how educated the Huntsville area was and that the schools were not horrible. I was told I was stupid and naive and a bad mother if I let my kids go to school down here. I think it just makes all of the unemployed and over taxed in the north feel better about themselves to take that route.

To be fair, except for inner city schools which are not exactly fair representations - rural/suburban schools in the north (at least, northeast) are actually pretty good.

What I've learned from living in the south isn't that schools across the south are bad, but that there is a HUGE difference from one school to the next in the same town, usually along economic or racial lines. Communities tend to be more homogenous. When I lived in Mississippi, the high school just down the street from me was one of the best in the state (which would have made it middle of the pack where I'm living now; northern Virginia - but NOVA has outstanding schools). Meanwhile, another school on the other side of town was one of the worst in the state.

It seems to me that the south just has a less normal distribution when it comes to schools/scores. I do think that spending per capita on education is too low in AL overall though.

I'm actually hopeful that Huntsville's higher numbers of educated people break the trend for the state... or at the least, that I can find a house in an area with good schools.