2 ms·

South Bay Area has quite a few prosperous cities (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Cupertino, Saratoga) where the demographics are politically liberal in ca

South Bay Area has quite a few prosperous cities (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Cupertino, Saratoga) where the demographics are politically liberal in candidate preference and their public schools are outstanding. Maybe they're not as good as the private schools you're talking about, but the cities in South Bay tend to be brimming with optimism for their young generations. In one well known city with a strong middle class, one might expect half of the students to be on the fastest math track available and half of the math faculty in the local high school to be Calculus teachers. The surrounding cities are not too much different. I wonder what makes your city different? Would you mind specifying what region you're talking about?

monero-xmr 4y ago
Top-20 American city in the boundaries of the city proper (not suburbs). The public schools are awful.
gamechangr 4y ago
Pretty much the rest of the country has awful public schools. Every large city has a few good ones and a number of less than wonderful ones. I think a meaningful separation point might be the cost of living and more specifically the taxes raised from housing. If you have houses with an average price of $1M and houses with an average price of $300k, in the latter a public school system would simply have less to work with.
- HALtheWise 4y ago
  This gets brought up a lot, but in (all? most?) US states the additional state and local funding that goes to low-income schools more that makes up for the decreased local property tax revenue. That manifests as a negative correlation between affluence and per-pupil spend, and (at least in Ohio where I grew up) a negative correlation between per-pupil spend and various measures of academic success. I wish people would look up the data on this sort of thing before confidently making claims. https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/ https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...

monero-xmr 4y ago

Top-20 American city in the boundaries of the city proper (not suburbs). The public schools are awful.

gamechangr 4y ago

Pretty much the rest of the country has awful public schools. Every large city has a few good ones and a number of less than wonderful ones. I think a meaningful separation point might be the cost of living and more specifically the taxes raised from housing. If you have houses with an average price of $1M and houses with an average price of $300k, in the latter a public school system would simply have less to work with.

HALtheWise 4y ago
This gets brought up a lot, but in (all? most?) US states the additional state and local funding that goes to low-income schools more that makes up for the decreased local property tax revenue. That manifests as a negative correlation between affluence and per-pupil spend, and (at least in Ohio where I grew up) a negative correlation between per-pupil spend and various measures of academic success. I wish people would look up the data on this sort of thing before confidently making claims. https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/ https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...