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I went to an inner city, mostly Black school with poor scores. However it was important to know where the upper class, White schools were located so we knew where to score pot and coke.
Each child is bound to respond best in a different educational environment than the others. At least that is my experience. We did our homework and always found places with "good" schools. Nevertheless, we had to do a lot of tinkering along the way with all of them to actually find out what kind of educational environment suited each of them (not us) best and make the adjustment.
We never had to leave town or move within the town, but we did make a lot of adjustments, from nursery school to high school, and let them choose where they went to college.
Remember Bellman's theory: if each step in a journey is optimal, then the whole journey is optimal.
I substituted in a rural school a few times. The first time a teacher asked me if I went to church. I was surprised at the question and said I did. At lunch they said grace before they ate. If there was a stranger in the building they did not say grace. It's too bad that our courts disregard our First Amendment.
Razz mentions:
"Plus it seems like everyone answering is white... the best schools are the ones with a lot of Asian kids."
It's true. In fact we have over 100 kids from Red China in our high school. Their parents pay $32,000 each to send hem here. That's per year, not for the four years. Do the math. That's $3,200,000 per year for our local high school.
Something else that occurred to me when we were looking for schools, we were moving to an area. Around here, you can't send your child to another public school if you don't like the one in your district. We moved three times with school age kids and besides being in reasonable commuting distance, schools were our #1 priority.
The public schools in my area, outside of they city's, are all pretty good so you tend to break down what you want besides good test scores. When we were last moving we thought about what we liked and a couple of things that we thought of were how big the district was, both in population and area. We didn't want either. Since we had a middle age daughter, we thought it would make sense to be in a small school so perhaps she would be more comfortable quicker. We didn't want to be hauling the kids to play dates 30 minutes away, hence the small district. We wanted a good amount of AP classes in the high school and later learned that too many AP classes tended to put the kids into some sort of AP race, so it was good that we found a district that doesn't go overboard with that. There's just a lot of things to look for, and until you've had kids in schools, I don't think you quite know what you should have been looking for besides the obvious - test scores and safety. I think there's a misconception between good meaning test scores and non-diversity when it really means "what's good for my family"?
I don't think they mean just education. I think they also mean do the "kids" run amok while the teachers, who aren't predatory sexual deviants, hit the crack pipe between periods. Is it safe for their kid.
It's really simple, there are official school ranking services out there that give scores to individual schools and school districts, and people want to get into the schools that are ranked as 9's or 10's out of 10 on those scores. Those services take many, many things into account to come up with those scores.
This scoring is heavily used in my area- people move to neighborhoods that are listed for example as the "5th ranked district in the state", new housing developments will even advertise that they are in a particular district that is very highly ranked, and that greatly affects property values.
I see people often ask this question when they're asking about what neighborhood to move to. "I'm moving to this new city can you tell me which areas have good schools?"
The obvious answer is to look at test scores, college placement, and graduation rates. Objectively measurable standards that are simple to compare but don't really tell the whole story. Affluent neighborhoods tend to come out on top in all three. Of course those school districts have more resources and more support for extracurricular activities. But I would argue that teachers in poorer districts are actually better and more dedicated than teachers of spoiled brats.
Wealthy families also tend to place more importance on education. For poorer families, just getting into college would be a huge deal, but for wealthy parents, it's an embarrassment if they don't get into a good school or end up going to community college. Parents in affluent neighborhoods use their kids to compete with their neighbors and colleagues, a sort of keeping up with the joneses.
Few parents ask "what school is right for my kids?"
Affluent schools also have a much higher incidence of drug use and underage drinking. From what I've seen from "good schools", the high achieving students in the top 10% tend to go to prestigious colleges and many have successful careers. But a lot of the students end up worse off than average students in average schools. So many of the people I know who went to top high schools, who didn't "make it", ended up having serious drug problems and got diagnosed with mental health issues.
Really?
Have you ever lived in an affluent area? (my guess is no)
Have you ever lived in an affluent area? (my guess is no)
Yes. Drug use was extremely prevalent in the richest schools in my area. This is not news. It is well documented.
"[Affluent] youngsters reported significantly higher use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs than did their inner-city counterparts, and also showed elevations in comparison with national norms."
I don't know why it's a surprise. You know drugs cost money right?
I believed all the same stupid crap about "safety", until I got older and actually met students who went to poorer city schools and heard their side of things. Drug use was far less common. Teen pregnancy was more common (rich girls still got pregnant, their parents just paid for abortions). The reading level was a little lower, and their was fewer support for extracurriculars. Most of the "gang-bangers" dropped out of high school so weren't really a problem. A lot of my friends are teachers now and the ones most dedicated chose to teach in inner city schools. The ones who just wanted a job with summers off teach out in the suburbs. It's not like the pay is drastically different.
Also, I went to a very prestigious school and there was a lot of bullying and fights, sexual harassment of female students, perverted teachers who ogled and groped female students, etc.
And parents definitely used their children's school and their performance as a status symbol to compete with the country club friends. Maybe you had a different experience, but I guarantee mine is the more common.
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