If I were an American urbanite I would 100% homeschool my children too. Sending well-meaning kids to an inner city school should be considered a form of abuse.
The worst schools in urban areas (just like the worst schools in rural and suburban areas) need to be dramatically improved, but you do not help the situation by claiming all urban schools are terrible.
EDIT - If you have a California-centric view, it might be a little more understandable. Look at that list and you see that Los Angeles and San Francisco have 1 school each on the list. New York City has 12, Miami-Dade has 6, Chicago has 5, Houston and Dallas 4 each.
[1] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/national-...
It should also be noted that nearly all of them are "public" in name only. The BASIS schools, for instance, where my kids attend, are Charter schools, where parents are not technically required to, but shamed mercilessly into, "donating" what is effectively slightly discounted private school tuition.
As an example in New York annually about 30,000 kids take the specialized high school acceptance test, and about 800-850 are offered admission to Stuyvesant HS, one of the most elite. It is not the same experience of a neighborhood high school in a poor neighborhood.
That the first thought of public school issues is not writing to your representatives and voting for better schooling of future generations; instead, to isolate your children's education.
As a Frenchman, I noticed this feeling from USA citizens that the government is against you and there is nothing you can do about it. It was pernicious.
The second thought, to write to my representatives and improve education for everyone, is still there. I volunteer at a makerspace downtown that provides computing resources to inner-city kids that don't have anywhere near the same resources as my outlying, high-performing suburban district with our labs and awesome teachers. I have no delusion that a single letter to my representative would fix the underlying systemic issues like racist redlined housing districts, the inequality of property taxes for school funding, and the penalizing of 'underperforming' school districts, and give my child a good education.
Can I improve it? Sure! Fix it? Not for everyone, no, so I'll do what I can for my own child.
Any performance based comparison between school performance and life outcomes needs to include stats broken out by the homelife of the child. You could call it "Parental Responsibility" in most cases -- and that figure/statistic will represent most of the issues that everyone wants addressed. The thing is, it's the most impactful to the child, and it can't be meaningfully addressed without massive government control of family life.
Parents are responsible for their children's education. Success in anything is a mix of effort, knowledge, ability and luck (I consider timing part of luck).
I am going to give my children the best opportunities I can give them, within the bounds of my values and life experiences.
It's irrational to believe the outcome of an education should be identical between children. Unless you remove parents and have children raised by institutions, then parental involvement will always have a major impact on academic performance.
Strawman: If my child is interested in computers, and spends all their free time reading about and learning to program them, while their contemporaries choose to watch TV and play video games, should they be limited by what the "average" person in their class is able to do? Of course not!
It's akin to the school district that noticed that not enough black kids were in a gifted class, so their solution was to get rid of the gifted class. That's insanity.
Public schools should provide a solid education to children, and society needs to expect that the outcome of that will be based on the actual performance of the children and their circumstances. A school cannot fix everything that comes from single-parent households and broken families. It can (and should) try and help, but I think it's ridiculous to hold back other students that perform better because they have parental involvement that other children don't.
Every time a parent who cares about their child’s education pulls them out of public school, that’s one less parent who might otherwise be involved enough to improve the public school situation. You end up with public schools containing only the children of parents who are unable to afford the time or money for other options, only the teachers who can’t get jobs at private schools/tutors, etc etc.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for everyone to think “public schools are bad, I’m going to send my kid somewhere else.” I really wish we’d focus that energy towards making public schools better.
* It would probably take an emperor to do this, because there’s no way such a law would pass in the US today.
There’s a similar reason why, in countries that have state-funded health care, you’re not allowed to seek out private doctors or private insurance. The point is to not allow the rich to siphon the best resources away from everyone else. (This is obviously very anti-capitalist, but I think for some institutions like medicine and education, it may make sense.)
It’s similar to the tragedy of the commons… people acting in their own self-interests (better education for my child) create a situation that is worse than if we had a collective strategy (we all get a decent education, and get to share a better, more educated society.)
Me spending more time with my child doesn't take away from what other children receive. If I wasn't working with my child, then I certainly wouldn't be working with all of them in place of that.
And if everyone pulled their kids out of public school, virtually all of those children would be better off, with very few exceptions. Punting one's offspring to daycare and public schools so that both parents can work is the real tragedy of the commons.
There are just many resources out there on the internet to have excellent course materials and information delivered straight to your home, together with all sorts of physical activities and clubs available for recreation and group events, and there are big advantages to being able to learn at your own pace in a safe and non-disruptive environment taught by someone with a strong commitment to your well-being. Given all these advantages, the bar is pretty low for when customized learning exceeds the factory-style and heavily politicized education given at schools, especially given the current dysfunctional state of educational pedagogy in the U.S and the fact that unlike in other nations, the U.S. tends to draw teachers from the lowest scoring college graduates. The situation is very different in other nations, but in the U.S., education majors tend to be selected from the bottom of the barrel of the college graduate pool.
That said, the reason why most homeschoolers are much better off today is because parents who care about education and have the wherewithal to tutor their child self-select to homeschool. If everyone did it, you would find that a lot of parents can't spend the time to do it and need the school as a babysitter. Or they don't have the wherewithal to do it due to their own lack of education. So homeschooling is generally done by parents with above average education and income which is why it's so successful in the U.S. Make everyone do it, and those outcomes would change quite a bit.
If you believe in the growth mindset, you necessarily have to reject this idea that homeschoolers are a gifted bunch whose success cannot be replicated.
Except for the children who aren’t able to be pulled out of public school. They would be far worse off.
If you’re advocating getting rid of public schools as an institution, what are you replacing it with? Just not educating kids at all if their parents can’t afford it? Do you view education as a right or a privilege? Would you at least agree that society is better off if everyone is educated, or do you think it’s just a perk that you can go without?
Your plan is just crab bucket mentality dressed up in egalitarianism's clothing.
By the way, to those who are saying that your first responsibility is to your own kids, I agree, even if you put them in public school. It's still your responsibility.
Pay attention to how they're doing in school. If they're struggling, help them. You may not know as much as the teacher, but you're a functioning adult with access to the internet, and you can work with them one-on-one. If they need it, do that.
Pay attention to how they're doing emotionally. If public school is destroying them, you should know. When your kid says something like "Every day when I get ready for school, my stomach hurts", listen. (In our case, it was getting ready for private school, but it still was a giant red flag.) Do what you have to to either get them out or to help them survive.
Pay attention to what they're being taught. If they're getting propaganda - from either side - then give them balance. Teach them how to examine positions critically, not just to swallow whatever they're told.
It's your responsibility as a parent. Don't just hand them to a school and walk away.