Gosh this idea of "must have a good school" is wearing on me.
Public schools are what they are. The curriculum is set at state or federal levels - the schools are teaching the same materials.
My kids (now all grown) attended a district which many of my coworkers considered as "awful" because it was poor in relation to the others. A significant number of students were from the very worst neighborhoods.
The discipline issues were minimal because the school was almost militant with their rules. The kids hate that part but dang if it didn't work. Very little bullying or mayhem at the schools.
Due to the at risk population, the district was able to implement all sorts of interventions to help kids. Vocational assistance, tutoring, study and mentoring programs are everywhere and kids are expected to use them.
It does have its downside. The places where the gap was most notable was in the "nice-to-haves". Areas like athletics programs where the lack of funding resulted in the football team never winning; the drama team for UIL did not have an even playing field when it came to materials and props. Guess what, these things did not tank the kids. Disappointing but really no big deal. Football and drama still happened and were fun.
Peer pressure to have the latest best stuff is much lower at this school than some of the richer ones. The kids have to improvise and use their creativity more, which is a huge advantage for future Mustachians.
My kids have done amazingly well - all of them graduated within the top 1% of their class. One of them is an astrophysicist and the others are attending college with bright futures. They have great skills at maneuvering through large bureaucracies. I am especially proud of their ability to get along with very diverse groups.
Good parenting is the essential ingredient.
I didn't let the school shoulder all the responsibility. I taught my children that they were responsible for getting the most out of their studies. I stepped up when they needed something extra. I actually met with and discussed progress with the teachers.
I'll wager that a whole lot of the "good school" mentality that parents hear is a subtle attempt at keeping up with the Jones'.
/rant.
For sure some of it is keeping up with the Jones', but there's another aspect.
For one thing, we have a couple of schools with MUCH better test scores. And parents from all elementary areas try to get into that school. The downside for me? Keeping up with the Jones'. Those kids tend to be MUCH richer and much more spendy and much more spoiled. Speaking from a little bit of experience, but also the experience of friends who are teachers at these schools. There's a ton of peer pressure.
I realize that the requirements are set at the federal/state level, but to give you an idea -
The test scores (I'm an engineer, bear with me, numbers matter to me) of the district we are in are dismal. 740 out of 1000.
Generally they also break the scores down by socio-economic status and English learner status.
However, they don't at our home school because >95% of the students are economically disadvantaged and >75% are English learners.
The 25-30% of the district that don't fall into those groups transfer out or go to private school.
This means for the 9 English Origin students in the school (out of 400) who attend the school, they are held back by the amount of work put into the English learners to, well, learn English.
The school we transferred into has 75% economically disadvantaged and about 50-60% English learners (and 34% of the students' parents did not graduate high school). However, because there is a larger % of students with English origin language and not economically disadvantaged, they break out the numbers.
702 for English learners
940 for English origin.
The larger % of EO students means that the teachers teach to the EO students, mostly (it's also a reason the EL students do dismally. They haven't figured out how to fix that.) Also, a large % of the students are bussed in, so it's not particularly a "neighborhood school", and we have an extreme tardiness problem.
If you have a "smart" student, you have to wonder how well they would do with more competition, which is what you get at other, better, schools. I know for one thing, my son (in 3rd grade) has made MANY more strides the 2 years that his classmates included a pair of twins with a math teacher mother and a doctor father. He's a competitive little bugger. In general the better schools have better students, kids can learn "faster", and yes, there is more money for extracurriculars.
The budgets being what they are here, there is no money in the budget for art, science, computers, music, physical education. Thus, the PTA has to raise money for these things. The really poor schools (>95% economically disadvantaged) get state money. The rich schools easily raise $150,000-250,000.
Our school needs to raise $80k per year, and we are at $20k, and the school year is half over. That's $200 per student, but only about 60-80 families can afford to fund raise or donate.
Half of that money goes to pay the "specialists" salaries to teach music, PE, art, science (well, actually they canceled science this year), etc.
It's a bummer.
My kids will be fine, because we also teach at home. But the school district is hugely important, especially if you don't have the ability to teach at home or the money to supplement school learning.
