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- California native living in Arizona.
^ Sounds perfect! You're very lucky to live there
Makes me glad that I live in a big, impersonal, anonymous city.
No kidding! The comment about the schools really shakes me. I spent 35 years as a teacher and dept head in a high school...if our students had been performing that poorly, we would have viewed it as a serious failure on our part. We'd have worked hard to improve...really hard. "The schools are horrible"...makes me wonder about the staff, the board and the parents...what's wrong with them? I think I'll just stay put in my city...there may be more than 3 million of us crowded on the shore of Lake Ontario with a serious embarrassment as a mayor, but we don't have stories like this one.
Some of it has to do with the way schools are funded- they are not desirable places to work and cannot raise the taxes to fund stable programs. They are basically a revolving door for new teachers who get burnt out. The students who graduate don't typically stay in the area and the cycle remains unbroken. My rural school had a 80% graduation rate- the city school district where I live now has a 45% graduation rate. Hands down my school was better just by the odds of graduating.
I want to send my child to a rural school district. I can supplement their education as a parent, and I think it's important to see economic diversity first hand and not have it be some abstract concept that is learned as an adult. I also think we're all in this together. If all the more prosperous families who can afford private education pull away from the public schools, that will not improve the situation. In addition, unlike the cities, rural areas typically do not have private programs or charter schools available; moving away from the public school systems in general hurts those who do not have those options.
But I am also a strong supporter of free public education.
This is the Topix page from my hometown. Warning: it's pretty ugly.
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/winchester-in