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Comment by jl6 | Hacker News Reader

Which states are doing it right?

In New Jersey and Massachusetts at least, there is absolutely no move to water down the math curriculum in any way. On the contrary, the schools here compete on how many AP courses are offered.

When I moved to MA, it blew my mind when I learned that what Florida considers an 'advanced' or even 'specialized' education is literally the baseline education in Boston and the suburbs. The best schools in Miami Dade County would be median in Middlesex.

Here's a comparison between MA and CA standards: https://twitter.com/BethKellySF/status/1518991575526699008?s...

New Jersey also has an excellent practices of magnet schools at the county level. So that even if you are in a poorer school district you can go study and apply for a magnet school at the county that is better and more focused on high academic schools. These schools focus on basically college level education for their area in health care, biochem, technology, arts, etc. with many AP courses. The normal public schools are also good in NJ with a solid baseline, but the magnet schools open up access to what would otherwise be private specialized schools to all income levels.

Magnet schools benefit the individual student but they are a bit problematic for many schools because they pick off the highest performers and whoever is willing to do the work to get admitted / physically drive to the magnet.

And then the home school quality goes down and that hurts everyone else who isn't among the small group at the magnet.

One thing I notice in NJ is that although there are plenty of private schools and academy's, you still see a lot of people in multi-million dollar homes paying 60k a year in property taxes sending their kids to the public high school. Even the most progressive mother wouldn't do that if the schools weren't at least up to snuff at offering the curriculum that can get their kids into "good" universites.

A reflection of the electorate. There are enough dummies in California who feel the need to cry out through political power.

It depends on the part of Massachusetts. The suburbs close to and beyond the I-95 have astoundingly good public schools. They're also expensive to buy into.

Boston proper and surrounding areas have begun to suffer from the same epidemic of anti-gifted mania that plagues California and is beginning to affect New York City, especially with regards to the exam schools (i.e. Boston Latin et al).

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