<p>My son’s school is on the list. It is a decent public school. Much better than the high school I attended in many ways - better teachers, harder classes, stronger students. It draws from a highly educated populace so while there are minorities there, their parents are educated. The populace is not wealthy by the standards of the larger urban area and most of the families are two-income. Most of the students head to public university upon graduation.</p>
<p>I have a child who is near the top in his class and one who was at the bottom. The school was not perfect in dealing with the bottom student, but I have to say that they tried. The teachers were very flexible and the administration worked hard to counsel him. I finally had to put him in a private school with only 5 kids/class in order to get him through his most difficult classes, but the public high school was good about integrating him back in when he returned. The main complaint I have about the school is that there wasn’t any vocational training. The district offered it, but at a different school. They did have a transistion to work program for special ed kids. My son didn’t want to do it because he was happy with his after-school job and wanted to continue with it.</p>
<p>The private schools in our area are more self-selecting and have a better track record for getting kids into the top 20 colleges. They also offer more AP courses. Son’s school offers 11 AP classes - 2 science, 2 math, 2 language, 1 English, 2 social studies, 2 in electives. The private schools offer one more in each area, and lots of kids are able to take more. At son’s school, the AP classes have so much homework that it’s very difficult to take 3 each year, much less the 4 or 5 that I see some of the kids on this forum taking.</p>