5 ms·

As someone not from the US, does this mean you don't get to choose the high school you go to and it is only determined by your address regardless of where you f

As someone not from the US, does this mean you don't get to choose the high school you go to and it is only determined by your address regardless of where you friends go, etc.?

jmuguy 3y ago
If you're attending public school for the most part - no, you'll be assigned to a school. There are a lot of exceptions though, merit based schools you can elect to attend, lottery based systems. And of course your parents are free to pay for private school. This system does come with issues though, like parents lying about their address to get their kids into a "better" school.
beefman 3y ago
Correct. School assignment at all levels of public school in the U.S. is determined by residence address, with the exception of the magnet and charter school systems,[1][2] which are application-based. There are also private schools. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_...
SushiHippie 3y ago
In Germany, we have something similar but only for Elementary Schools (1st - 4th grade). After that, you are mostly free to choose, which school you want to attend.
- FinnKuhn 3y ago
  I am German, so I am familiar with our system, which is why I asked specifically about high schools ;)
  - SushiHippie 3y ago
    Ah, makes sense! Huh the world is small, I live in the city where you study ;)
    - FinnKuhn 3y ago
      damn, the world really is small
lhamil64 3y ago
Also, about the "regardless of where your friends go" part, I'd say most people meet their friends in school. I guess if they moved and had to change schools that would suck but I can't think of anyone that happened to personally (other than friends who moved far away, like to another state). And the school district is often a very key factor when people with kids are looking for housing.
- FinnKuhn 3y ago
  At least where I live you change the school you go to at least once and I just assumed it was the same in the US considering that there are middle and high school. So when you switch from middle to high school, I would have assumed not all of your friends end up at the same school...
  - lhamil64 3y ago
    In my school, my district had an elementary school, middle school, & high school. So yes if you live at the same address the whole time, you and your friends would all go through each school together.
  - johnjreiser 3y ago
    This is mostly true in the US. The map is reflecting districts. I happen to be in a small town in New Jersey, so we're an elementary district with one school. Children after 6th grade go to a middle school and high school that is part of the secondary district which overlaps other municipalities/elementary districts. Some districts have multiple elementary schools and their own local level maps (not reflected here) that influence placement in the elementary schools in the district.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    They are all assigned by address; so there are N elementary schools that feed into a single junior high (or middle school), and typically a junior high will feed into a single high school. So your friends move up with you unless someone moves. This is all "typical"; there are many exceptions. Where I live now, they unified the secondary schools (i.e. junior-high and high-school) so that you can apply to go to a different junior-high or high-school than your local one, space permitting. Similarly where I grew up, you could apply to go to a different school, but a "legitimate academic reason" was required. People did game the system, most commonly by claiming they wanted to study a foreign language that was offered at the school they wanted to go to, but not the school they were in the district for. I should note that where I grew up the school-system was unusually non-local in the sense that there was one system for the entire county (which was about half the land area of Saarland). Even then you were required to go to the local school though. More typical is that each town or city manages the schools for their area.
nineplay 3y ago
As someone from the US - does this mean there are places where students are free to go to any high school they wish? Could this result in overcrowding if all the students want to go to the same school?
- henriquecm8 3y ago
  I am from Brazil, I don't know how it is in other parts of the country, but there are no restrictions here as far as I know. I heard of people that would study in the school in the other side of the city because it was considered the best school. But there is a limit of how many students a school can accept, so they need to enroll as soon as possible. And I think they need to arrange their own way to get to school, because it's not a route the school bus would make. Bear in mind that my city has around 100 thousand inhabitants, I don't know if this considered small or medium in US.
  - kirubakaran 3y ago
    100k would be considered small. San Francisco has 800k people, and it is considered small.
    - kodt 3y ago
      San Francisco is considered small? Its a top 20 city in terms of population.
      - zem 3y ago
        i live there and i think of it as medium sized, but then again i'm from india :) 800k would make the top 100 in india, but certainly not the top 20.
      - kirubakaran 3y ago
        Wow TIL! And I've been living in SF for over 10 years!
        3y ago
kodt 3y ago
For your regular public schools yes. However some districts also have more specialized selective enrollment schools you can apply to get accepted to, which may be based on academic performance/testing/demographics. Sometimes people will use a relative's address to get into a different school/district. Other than that, charter schools and private schools are also an option of course.
gizmo686 3y ago
Public schooling in the US is done at a very local level, so varies significantly across the country. Where I grew up, the 1 school in your district was required to accept you. However, some of the nearby districts would let you apply to them, and accept people on a case by case basis. For the most part, this let academically strong students go anywhere; but was also used to let families who move stay at the same school (including siblings who were not yet enrolled). There are also charter school, which are a weird mix between public and private schools, that typically operate on a mix of applications and lotteries. Plus private schools that can enroll pretty much whoever they want.
aidenn0 3y ago
Yes the government-provided schooling tends to be hyper-local in the US, though there are exceptions. This was (along with other things) used to avoid regulations banning racial segregation of schools (since neighborhoods were already segregated due to policies like redlining). When people perceive one school to be better than another, they may use various forms of fraud to get their children into the school; using the grandparent's address is common (since grandparents may own a house in the suburbs while the parents are younger and live in an apartment in a poorer neighborhood).
- peterangular 3y ago
  > When people perceive one school to be better than another Often there's more to it than just perception. My parents moved to a smaller suburb so my brother and I could attend schools with higher standardized test scores, lower class sizes, less violent incidents, more extracurricular activities, and ultimately _a lot_ more funding. Both districts were public. They made this decision looking at publicly accessible data in the 80s/90s. Looking back, it was objectively one of the best decisions they made for our future... if not the best. --- Sure - address fraud is very common in regards to getting your kid to a better education opportunity but when there are stark, vast differences between districts I have a hard time blaming people. Especially given my anecdotal experience.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    > Often there's more to it than just perception Yes, perception has a correlation with reality. > Sure - address fraud is very common in regards to getting your kid to a better education opportunity but when there are stark, vast differences between districts I have a hard time blaming people. Especially given my anecdotal experience. Indeed, a friend of mine in elementary school was one example; his grandparents lived down the street from me, and his parents were in a terrible school district.
    - peterangular 3y ago
      > Yes, perception has a correlation with reality. Ope.. getting hung up on the statement "perception has a correlation with reality." Reality is the way things are, and perception is quintessentially subjective. It is not guaranteed that perception correlates with reality - just spend 10 minutes with my family for this lesson. I argue the difference between school districts in the US is not perception, as it is not subjective - it is fact. It is reality. This is something that has been so extensively studied I wish all of us could accept it as fact. Sorry to get hung up on a word. I find that people making these decisions aren't typically doing it from a subjective place -- they're making data-driven decisions to maximize their child's opportunities. Sorry to be pedantic... cheers!

As someone not from the US, does this mean you don't get to choose the high school you go to and it is only determined by your address regardless of where you friends go, etc.?

jmuguy 3y ago

If you're attending public school for the most part - no, you'll be assigned to a school. There are a lot of exceptions though, merit based schools you can elect to attend, lottery based systems. And of course your parents are free to pay for private school. This system does come with issues though, like parents lying about their address to get their kids into a "better" school.

beefman 3y ago

Correct. School assignment at all levels of public school in the U.S. is determined by residence address, with the exception of the magnet and charter school systems,[1][2] which are application-based. There are also private schools. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_...

SushiHippie 3y ago

In Germany, we have something similar but only for Elementary Schools (1st - 4th grade). After that, you are mostly free to choose, which school you want to attend.

FinnKuhn 3y ago
I am German, so I am familiar with our system, which is why I asked specifically about high schools ;)
- SushiHippie 3y ago
  Ah, makes sense! Huh the world is small, I live in the city where you study ;)
  - FinnKuhn 3y ago
    damn, the world really is small

lhamil64 3y ago

Also, about the "regardless of where your friends go" part, I'd say most people meet their friends in school. I guess if they moved and had to change schools that would suck but I can't think of anyone that happened to personally (other than friends who moved far away, like to another state). And the school district is often a very key factor when people with kids are looking for housing.

FinnKuhn 3y ago
At least where I live you change the school you go to at least once and I just assumed it was the same in the US considering that there are middle and high school. So when you switch from middle to high school, I would have assumed not all of your friends end up at the same school...
- lhamil64 3y ago
  In my school, my district had an elementary school, middle school, & high school. So yes if you live at the same address the whole time, you and your friends would all go through each school together.
- johnjreiser 3y ago
  This is mostly true in the US. The map is reflecting districts. I happen to be in a small town in New Jersey, so we're an elementary district with one school. Children after 6th grade go to a middle school and high school that is part of the secondary district which overlaps other municipalities/elementary districts. Some districts have multiple elementary schools and their own local level maps (not reflected here) that influence placement in the elementary schools in the district.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  They are all assigned by address; so there are N elementary schools that feed into a single junior high (or middle school), and typically a junior high will feed into a single high school. So your friends move up with you unless someone moves. This is all "typical"; there are many exceptions. Where I live now, they unified the secondary schools (i.e. junior-high and high-school) so that you can apply to go to a different junior-high or high-school than your local one, space permitting. Similarly where I grew up, you could apply to go to a different school, but a "legitimate academic reason" was required. People did game the system, most commonly by claiming they wanted to study a foreign language that was offered at the school they wanted to go to, but not the school they were in the district for. I should note that where I grew up the school-system was unusually non-local in the sense that there was one system for the entire county (which was about half the land area of Saarland). Even then you were required to go to the local school though. More typical is that each town or city manages the schools for their area.

nineplay 3y ago

As someone from the US - does this mean there are places where students are free to go to any high school they wish? Could this result in overcrowding if all the students want to go to the same school?

henriquecm8 3y ago
I am from Brazil, I don't know how it is in other parts of the country, but there are no restrictions here as far as I know. I heard of people that would study in the school in the other side of the city because it was considered the best school. But there is a limit of how many students a school can accept, so they need to enroll as soon as possible. And I think they need to arrange their own way to get to school, because it's not a route the school bus would make. Bear in mind that my city has around 100 thousand inhabitants, I don't know if this considered small or medium in US.
- kirubakaran 3y ago
  100k would be considered small. San Francisco has 800k people, and it is considered small.
  - kodt 3y ago
    San Francisco is considered small? Its a top 20 city in terms of population.
    - zem 3y ago
      i live there and i think of it as medium sized, but then again i'm from india :) 800k would make the top 100 in india, but certainly not the top 20.
    - kirubakaran 3y ago
      Wow TIL! And I've been living in SF for over 10 years!
      - 3y ago

kodt 3y ago

For your regular public schools yes. However some districts also have more specialized selective enrollment schools you can apply to get accepted to, which may be based on academic performance/testing/demographics. Sometimes people will use a relative's address to get into a different school/district. Other than that, charter schools and private schools are also an option of course.

gizmo686 3y ago

Public schooling in the US is done at a very local level, so varies significantly across the country. Where I grew up, the 1 school in your district was required to accept you. However, some of the nearby districts would let you apply to them, and accept people on a case by case basis. For the most part, this let academically strong students go anywhere; but was also used to let families who move stay at the same school (including siblings who were not yet enrolled). There are also charter school, which are a weird mix between public and private schools, that typically operate on a mix of applications and lotteries. Plus private schools that can enroll pretty much whoever they want.

aidenn0 3y ago

Yes the government-provided schooling tends to be hyper-local in the US, though there are exceptions. This was (along with other things) used to avoid regulations banning racial segregation of schools (since neighborhoods were already segregated due to policies like redlining). When people perceive one school to be better than another, they may use various forms of fraud to get their children into the school; using the grandparent's address is common (since grandparents may own a house in the suburbs while the parents are younger and live in an apartment in a poorer neighborhood).

peterangular 3y ago
> When people perceive one school to be better than another Often there's more to it than just perception. My parents moved to a smaller suburb so my brother and I could attend schools with higher standardized test scores, lower class sizes, less violent incidents, more extracurricular activities, and ultimately _a lot_ more funding. Both districts were public. They made this decision looking at publicly accessible data in the 80s/90s. Looking back, it was objectively one of the best decisions they made for our future... if not the best. --- Sure - address fraud is very common in regards to getting your kid to a better education opportunity but when there are stark, vast differences between districts I have a hard time blaming people. Especially given my anecdotal experience.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  > Often there's more to it than just perception Yes, perception has a correlation with reality. > Sure - address fraud is very common in regards to getting your kid to a better education opportunity but when there are stark, vast differences between districts I have a hard time blaming people. Especially given my anecdotal experience. Indeed, a friend of mine in elementary school was one example; his grandparents lived down the street from me, and his parents were in a terrible school district.
  - peterangular 3y ago
    > Yes, perception has a correlation with reality. Ope.. getting hung up on the statement "perception has a correlation with reality." Reality is the way things are, and perception is quintessentially subjective. It is not guaranteed that perception correlates with reality - just spend 10 minutes with my family for this lesson. I argue the difference between school districts in the US is not perception, as it is not subjective - it is fact. It is reality. This is something that has been so extensively studied I wish all of us could accept it as fact. Sorry to get hung up on a word. I find that people making these decisions aren't typically doing it from a subjective place -- they're making data-driven decisions to maximize their child's opportunities. Sorry to be pedantic... cheers!