As Kriston hypothesized, I don't see private schools as an educational Mecca. I'm actually not wild about having to fork over thousands of dollars every year for tuition when my property tax already pays for schools. But I'm not just unhappy on behalf of my kids. I'm grumpy about the appalling educations foisted on millions of kids in this country. Val
As a taxpayer and US citizen I am entitled and feel responsible to understand and critically evaluate the effectiveness of our local and national public schools. It�s a commonplace preemptive argument against possible criticism to imply that you must have a child in the system in order to comprehend the issues.
Honestly, I have met a greater number of parents whose children are in our public schools who are completely oblivious to educational measures, issues and debates than non-participating, but informed citizens who try to effect change at the local level here. In many cases, as long as their child receives mostly As, the parents lap up whatever the school district proposes and accuses those who question the agenda of �not supporting the kids�.
I know there are many excellent public school districts throughout the country, but we don�t happen to live in one. What makes this particularly irritating is that there are several districts (with nearly identical demographics) both near and far that offer more academic challenge and perform far better on NATIONAL testing while collecting less than half per $100,000 in property taxes. Our school district mantra is the more money the district collects, the better the education for the kids. Period. They ignore the fact that our children are at a disadvantage for even moderately competitive schools because the high school doesn�t offer any AP classes at all and, of course, no IB diplomas.
Conversely, I�ve been researching schools in the N. VA area as we may be moving there next summer. I am certain we could be quite satisfied with one of several public schools in that area as their educational philosophies seems more aligned to our (higher) expectations. As an added bonus, our property taxes would be ~ 40% of what we currently pay for the same home value.
