Let me give a little perspective on the issue. Linus lives in Dunthorpe, which is one of the Portland area's wealthiest neighborhoods. Back when I was in high s

Let me give a little perspective on the issue. Linus lives in Dunthorpe, which is one of the Portland area's wealthiest neighborhoods. Back when I was in high school, of the Dunthorpe kids that went to public schools, half went to Wilson High School and half went to Lake Oswego, both of which good schools. Then the Oregon legislature passed some law that required that primary schools feed into secondary schools in the same district, so Dunthorpe renovated an old grade school and made Riverdale High School. It's tiny - I just checked the Wikipedia page [1] and it only has 131 students and Riverdale is the 3rd wealthiest school district in the country (who says Open Source doesn't pay?). I mention all this because as far as public schools go, it's an outlier among outliers. So comparing it to schools in Minnesota or elsewhere goes beyond the normal case of poor school districts vs. wealthy ones. Plus, in Oregon at least, school funding does not correlate well with student performance. The Portland School District has higher per pupil funding than most of the suburbs, and yet it consistently under performs many of them. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverdale_High_School_%28Portland,_Oregon%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverdale_High_School_%28Portla...