@Zinhead I agree with your assessment of the metro atlanta area, although there are some consistently good school systems that have remained good for the last decade or so. Although I will say I see the writing on the wall with our school district-growth is killing the golden goose.
Good education is a moving target here, although we’re doing much better now than 30 years ago-look at the PSAT NMSF selection index number for Georgia is the same as Illinois. (219)
Like @itsgettingreal17 we’re downsizing when D2 goes to college in 2018, and I will happily not give a hoot about how good the school is-just how close to the sand we are :).
We pay about $20k a year just in property taxes on an 1800 sq ft house. good district, but more importantly, close to NYC for the commute. It’s worth it, but I can’t wait to leave those property taxes behind me!
@Lindagaf we probably are. Would 20k make the house modest in your town;)? Crazy to see 35 and 40k in property taxes. My own sister, (my niece, my cousins, my nephew) doesn’t even make that much in a year! This, not the extra expense, keeps me in my house! I can’t go over that $20 mark mentally. Though I’m sure the town will jump that shark for me!!!
We are in a top school district. Our housing prices are through the roof. However, our local high school is a pressure cooker and I think my girls might have been better served elsewhere (I did actually have to pull one out and pay for private school-I think I averted a nervous breakdown with that one).
We moved from MA to AZ and bought into the “top” school district, but property taxes were/are about $3,500 for a 3,000 sq. ft. house, so draw your own conclusions. What is considered “top” here would be totally underwhelming to any of you in the Midwest or on the coasts. We opted for boarding school.
We never moved out of our “starter” home as it is in a top district. Our girls received a great education and our place has appreciated much more than if we had lived other places in San Diego.
What exactly makes a “top” school a top school? People will say that the difference in education between Harvard and a community college is very little because after all, calculus is the same everywhere. Why does that not also apply to high schools? At least at Harvard, there is some selection process that is somewhat based on academics. For most public high schools, the selection process is pretty much, are your parents willing and able to pay for a house in the catchment area?
My parents spent a lot of effort trying to move from an average school district to a “top” school district (though they were unsuccessful in doing so because of the housing crisis). The educational reasons they gave for doing so were very vague and didn’t make much sense. When I compared notes with friends that attended “top” high schools, we didn’t find a whole lot of difference in our educations. Mostly it was poor overall. Personally I’m convinced that wanting to live in a “top” school district is just a politically correct way of justifying avoiding poor people and minorities.
Insofar as poor people and minorities tend to live in lousy school districts, that’s true.
Wealth and whiteness correlate strongly with good schools in the US. But I think what most people think of as “good” here is the vast majority go onto college - 4 year ones, there are lots of advanced courses, teachers don’t (have to) focus on behavior as much as academics, counseling is strong, there are plenty of resources for music, art, sports, classes are small, facilities are more than adequate (no shortage of books and lab equipment and laptops or whatever).
That said, economic and racial diversity are important ingredients in the “good school” mix for many people who are in a position to choose too.
The strongest correlating aspect of a school’s record in nominally academic measures is parental educational attainment.
Wealth and race do often correlate to that, but there are some cases where they diverge, and the school’s measures follow parental educational attainment.
I alluded to it in my previous post - the district we lived in previously didn’t have some basics in the elementary schools - art, music, librarians, PE and foreign language were all missing (or horribly piecemeal.)
The district we moved into had 11 kindergarteners in a class. That small class size is such a huge difference alone. Add in a music teacher, PE teacher, art teacher… etc and suddenly all other schools in the area pale in comparison.
At the high school level the difference is even bigger. Class sizes average about 20 kids, and for an English or history class that difference in class size is remarkable. It wasn’t unusual for my kids to be assigned 6 papers throughout the term (and not 3 or 4 page papers either.) The English teacher has time to give meaningful feedback to each kid and that results in some finely honed writing skills going into college. The history teacher can assign in-depth projects complete with an entire period of presentations required from each student- which helps hone those presentation skills. The English teachers would frequently review papers for the history and science teachers to keep continuity on the review of the kids’ writing skills.
The funding for a school like that requires more than the bare minimum funding levels from the state. So not so shockingly, the really good school is in an area that few people can afford. Parental education is high as is the expectation that kids will go to college.
There is a family who owns a Chinese restaurant several hours away from our high school. The parents live nearby the restaurant and operate it. Unhappy with the local district, they rented an apartment in our district and have their kids live with their grandmother during the school year in order to attend our HS, and the kids infrequently see their parents on weekends. Both are typical high-achieving Asian kids who will attend good colleges, something their parents never did.
We bought a house in a decent neighborhood with 1 of the better school districts in our area. However, we learned that the education in our local district really left a lot to be desired, even though it scores as 1 of the better districts. We switched our kids to a charter school and end up driving 30-45 min each way from home to school every day, but it’s been totally worth it. My kids have developed such a passion for learning from the teachers at the charter school. Plus, we don’t have to pay any private school tuition and we didn’t have to move. Their school is really diverse and we really enjoy that…30 different languages spoken at home among all of the students’ families!
@warbrain , wow. Sorry, but I disagree with that totally. We moved from a very diverse neighborhood in London to a leafy suburban area outside NYC. In our London neighborhood, there was a mosque a few blocks away, a couple of small housing estates, and a huge range of people, from very well off to working class. There were kids of every race. We moved to our very good school district in the US because there was plenty of room for our kids to run around in the garden. We had a tiny garden back in England. We could have moved to a similar neighborhood in the city I guess, but we were done with city living. It wasn’t so we could avoid living near poor people and minorities. That’s quite out of order.
People want the best for their kids. As far as we were concerned, moving to our current home had everything to do with giving them plenty of space to play, and living in a good school district. I am guessing that 99% of parents would choose to live in a good school district rather than a bad one.
I live in the NY suburbs and there is no race that dominates our school. Many of the inner suburbs especially are quire diverse with a mix of white, black and immigrants.
On the other hand, sometimes a high performing school with too many of certain minorities gets a “pressure cooker” or “too competitive” reputation and “white flight” occurs.
