Our Local Public School

Elizabeth at Half-Changed World sparked a conversation about middle-class public school choices in various spots around the internet.  The debate strikes close to home.

We moved to Red Clay State in 2004.  We bought our current home almost entirely because of our decisions about public schools.  We ended up buying a house in the most elite public school district in the state.  We explicitly chose this house after rejecting a house in the more ethnically diverse, poorer district where we originally looked.

This is my remarkably wordy attempt to explain that decision.

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First, some statistical data about the school where we first planned to send our kids, available at GreatSchools for the 2004-2005 school year:

• 40 percent African-American, 34 percent white, 21 percent Latino, 5 percent Asian.
• 40 percent free/reduced lunch
• 25 students per full-time equivalent teacher
• 96 percent attendance
• 73 percent of teachers fully licensed
• 27 percent of teachers with zero to three years' experience
• 86 percent of students passed EOG math and reading tests in third grade

The same statistical data for the school our kids now attend, in a different, far wealthier district:

• 65 percent white, 22 percent African-American, 10 percent Latino, 3 percent Asian.
• 23 percent of students receive free/reduced lunch
• 13 students per full-time equivalent teacher
• 96 percent attendance
• 93 percent of teachers fully licensed
• 17 percent of teachers with zero to three years experience
• 93 percent of students pass EOG math, 91 percent pass EOG reading in third grade

Why did we change our minds?

Interestingly enough, it wasn't race or test scores, the two issues that come up the most.  I was excited, in that naive liberal white middle-class way, about the kids attending a white-minority school.  It seemed as if ethnic diversity would give them a social advantage, given the nation's demographic trends.  As for test scores, when they're broken down by race, white kids score about the same regardless of school or district.  And black and Latino kids actually score about five points higher on average at the school in Urban District than they do at the school in Highest Ranked District that we finally chose.

No, we rejected the Urban District school for a reason only hinted at via the statistic on student : teacher ratios.  Turns out, our first-choice school in Urban District suffers from serious over-crowding, with no plan for alleviation in sight.  When we drove by the well-maintained, solid-looking building, we counted 10 trailers in the parking lot.  When I found the previous year's action report on-line, we learned that there were more than 800 students in a building designed for 600.  The report bemoaned discipline problems in hallways and cafeterias.  The playground was suffering from serious erosion and there was a significant overcrowding issue out there.

As for student : teacher ratios themselves, classroom sizes in Urban District paralleled those of Highest Ranked District, averaging around 20 in kindergarten and 24 in third grade.  Highest Ranked District, however, funds full-time teaching assistants for kindergarten through grade Two, cutting student : teacher ratios in half.  They used to have teaching assistants in third grade, too, but there were cuts in the state budget two years ago and the TAs had to go.

Typing this out, I'm struck by the blatant privilege of our decision.  Crowded hallways?  A loud and undisciplined cafeteria?  Erosion on the playground?  Please.  Cry me a river.  Even the teaching assistants are a sign of extravagance, not necessity.

Nevertheless, we decided not to choose Urban District school after all.  We had confidence in the kids' academic achievement in that setting, for the most part.  Their ability to enjoy school, however, seemed at risk.  The best teachers in the world won't change over-taxed facilities.

There's a lot hidden in that last "for the most part," too.

Calder was a reluctant future user of the public schools.  The promise of three private or parochial school tuitions definitely helped him choose public schools, but he was never as committed as I was.  He attended parochial schools, I attended public schools.  He grew up in Teeny Tiny Mid-Atlantic State, in a region where most middle-class white families sent their kids to parochial or private schools.  I grew up in Mosquito State, where only the ultra-rich and the Catholics avoided the public schools.  We approached the whole issue with very different gut instincts about what was best for our kids.

When we first began looking for houses in Red Clay State, most of Calder's future co-workers were openly aghast that we were planning to send our kids to Urban District public schools.  Not a single parent in his department currently uses those schools -- they all send their children to private academies, or homeschool their kids.  The older generation mostly lived in Highest Ranked District and used the public schools there, but we're the only family with school-age kids in Calder's department pursuing that option now.

It's not actually helpful, when choosing public schools, for anyone to label you "brave."  We were in that position as we looked at Urban District housing and schools.  It didn't increase Calder's confidence in his choice, to put it mildly.  He didn't look forward with pleasure to the explicit comparisons of his children's educational opportunities against those of his colleagues for thirteen years.  His colleagues gave every indication that they would make those comparisons relentlessly.

[Worth mentioning: I don't know whether this flight from public schools is a general trend at Calder's place of employment.  We had limited contact with staff and with professors from other, less financially generous departments while we were making our decision.  Our church is located in Urban District City, however, and of the fifteen or so third- and fourth-grade Sunday schoolers I've taught, only four that I know of attend public schools of any kind.  Two of them are in magnet elementary schools.  Maybe that's just an indictment of our church.]

One lone family from the previous generation used the Urban District public schools.  While we were actively looking for housing in that district, they shared their story with us.  They had enrolled their kids with the explicit plan that they would tough out any single bad year, but that if any child had two bad years in a row, that child would be sent elsewhere.  Their children all ended up in fantastic magnet schools, graduated from Urban District with honors, and attended the sorts of universities and colleges one would expect a professor's child to choose.

It was a welcome story, but it hid a small problem.  The problem was the magnet-school option.

Magnet schools in Urban District are over-subscribed.  Each and every one of them requires a lottery for entrance.  And while younger siblings have first dibs on a lottery once older siblings are admitted, there are no similar provisions for multiples that we could discover.  It was entirely conceivable that one of our children would gain access to a magnet middle school but that the other two wouldn't.

In other words, we could try the public schools -- we anticipated no real issues until middle school anyway -- but we had no obvious second choice if our kids ran into problems.  Private schools?  Either very expensive, or very hard to get three kids into, or both -- and clearly a serious step backward in terms of ethnic and economic diversity.  Sell our house and buy an inevitably more expensive house in the better public school district?  Too risky for Calder's taste, given the over-heated housing market.

Calder ended up driving down and buying this house, where we live now, just to guarantee that we could send the kids to these acceptable public schools.  He did this in such a rush that I didn't see the house in person until the day we drove south and signed the contract at closing.

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I read Calder one of Bitch Ph.D.'s comments about this issue, to see what he had to say.  First, via Unfogged, here's what Dr. Bitch has to say about the value of ethnically diverse urban schools:

The problem with this plan [attending rigorous if ethnically and economically homogeneous elementary schools, and using more diverse state universities for higher education] ...  is that the early schooling sets a lot of unconscious social norms as well as a lot of intellectual ones. Kids who have early experiences being friends with kids from different income brackets and ethnic backgrounds will grow up, I believe, more comfortable around a broader range of people, so that egalitarianism and diversity aren't just something to taste but are part of the wider social fabric. That stuff develops the brain, too, and I really think it's harder for the educated white middle class to access than advanced mathematics and so on.

Calder's response?  Our choice wasn't between more or less integrated public schools; our choice was between private academies and the public schools we're using now, here in Highest Ranked District.  Our kids would not be gaining any education in diversity at the private schools we would, Calder believes, now be using, had we bought a house in Urban District.

I hadn't realized that Calder's opposition to Urban District schools had grown in the last two years, so that was a revealing bit of information.

He also pointed out that the problem of Urban District schools is largely a coordination problem.  If all the middle- and upper-class families currently using private or parochial options in Urban District started using the public schools en masse, the schools would improve pretty much overnight.  Calder mused out loud that the local university, if it wanted to find a relatively inexpensive method for improving the local schools, should start offering a financial incentive to employees who chose the public schools.  (I thought to myself that it would have the added benefit of improving staff salaries, since they probably have no choice but to use public schools anyway.)

Then Calder paused and noted that, if wealthier parents used the public schools in large enough numbers to improve their quality, demand for housing in that district would rise.  Rising demand would drive the cost of housing higher, possibly to such an extent that poor parents would no longer be able to afford to live there.

Sometimes Calder is just irritating.

I also want to point out that, in fact, there has been a massive housing boom in parts of Urban District, and plenty of those new homeowners are using the public schools -- which are doing pretty well, at least at the elementary level.  There's a reason why our first-choice school was so far over capacity.  So where Calder gets his antagonism to Urban District schools is  a little hard to pin down.

*colleagues* cough cough *colleagues*

As difficult as it might be to choose risky-looking [as opposed to actually bad] public schools in the face of grandparental or community pressure, it's just about impossible to make that choice without both parents being on board.  I would have felt more comfortable being "brave" if Calder had been ready to choose Urban District, too.  He was relying on my commitment, however, and that proved too much for me.  We reached a point where I simply could not allay his concerns, not in the face of so much opposition.  We ended up choosing the safer public schooling route, for our own peace of mind.  Now we get to live with the consequences, such as they are.

Chalk another one up to white privilege, I'm afraid.

Comments

[Madeleine]

This is a big topic in my house, too, with a similar split. I started school in Leafy New England University City (I think) and my mom, as a single parent with a minimally supportive ex-husband, was staring at the "private school or nicer town" problem. She managed to buy a house in the town just north and I am a public school girl. Meanwhile, my husband's mom, as a single parent with no financial help from outside, took out loans to put him through private schools. So naturally he thinks private is better.

So far Snuggly Girl is in public school, but we went for a magnet school despite paying for a house around the block from one of the best public schools in the city. (We toy with moving to the cheapest neighboorhood served by the magnet school, but moving is such a horrendous experience so we'll never do it.) My Love still scans the lists of private schools every time they come up, and we both hope that she'll get into the geeky university lab school for middle/high school.

The worst part for me is that he thinks it is entirely my job (he being much too busy trying to get tenure so we don't have to move again) to advocate and work the system to make sure SG gets the best out of public school. We aren't thrilled with her 1st grade teacher (less than a week in) and he thinks I should have been in nagging to the principal last spring. Maybe I should have. I believed the newsletter that said you couldn't.

Someone commented in one of the posts you linked to that they didn't mind being known as a domineering mom in the school office. I may have to pretend I feel that way, too.

[SheilaC]

Fascinating. Where we live (small city in Canada), we don't have nearly so many options, or so much racial diversity. We also don't have that kind of statistics available to compare schools. Our options were the neighbourhood public or Catholic school, or bus the kids to a French immersion, or to a private Christian school. Happily our neighbourhood school is only 6 years old, well equipped, and the staff are very enthusiastic, innovative and welcoming of parental involvement. So we are happy to be sending our kids to the neighbourhood school.

However it is a relatively well-to-do, homogenous middle class area, and I wish there were more diversity of backgrounds, for the reasons you cite.

Still, my husband and I are elitist enough that if we saw statistics on schools and teachers similar to yours, we would definitely make the same choice. Much lower teacher ratio, greater teacher training and experience, and apparently higher student achievement would be very important to us.

I hope your kids are happy, and you are happy with your decision, and that this school will continue to be a wonderful place for your children to grow and learn.

[Jennifer]

Very insightful about the choices available to you. Our choices were less, like SheilaC, but I suspect we would split in similar ways.

[isabel]

Don't feel bad about your decision. You can make other choices about who you socialise with, go to church with and where you send your kids to after school activities. You have to compromise on some things but not on everything.

[AmericanFamily]

We made similar choices when we bought our house. We made some compromises on racial and socioeconomic diversity in exchange for a really good school district and walkable neighborhood. Even with those compromises, we figure the public suburban school is still MUCH MUCH more diverse than the private schools here. Sending M to the really bad city schools was simply not something we were ever willing to consider.

We won't know if we made the right choice until M starts in another 2 years. If we don't like the school here, we will probably move to a wealthier suburb with slightly better schools and more Asian kids.

[Sarah]

I remember this angst acutely--it all played out while I was pregnant with my oldest, now 5. We moved back to our hometown to be near my mom. And we were public school kids all the way. And our fair city's suburbs are relentlessly white--I think the percent non-white for the suburbs is at <4%. If we left the city, it wasn't just less racial and ethnic diversity, it was no ethnic and racial diversity. The city has a public Montessori program. It is a lottery and most of my worries centered on whether we would get in and whether it would really work all the way to 8th grade. There has been a shift to divest the city of middle schools.

My daughter is now in her third year--she started in K3 and is now in K5. I think the experience has been great for us, but a funny thing happened. My husband got a new job last year not in downtown as we expected, but in a far exurb. New angst. And all the choices feel odd to this city girl. We have found a suburb we like and the schools are good by test sores and reputation. But the stats on diversity are very different than our current school choice:
White 97%, Asian/Pacific Islander 2%, Black 1%, Hispanic <1%

And only 3% of kids qualify for the free or reduced lunch.

Compared, my daughters current school is:
Black 60%, White 28%, Asian/Pacific Islander 6%, Hispanic 4%, American Indian/Alaskan Native 2%

And 60% free/reduced lunch.

We'll reduce my husband's commute considerable, allowing him to see the kids more often and maybe even get to school sometimes. And we are choosing a middle ground that let's us head back to the city fairly regularly. What a crazy world. It has made me feel better that other people think about this too. I felt alone in my angst even after my daughter started school. I was shocked at how many of my daughter's classmates parents didn't seem to put effort into tours or back-up plans.

[Kristen]

We moved two years ago, and we chose a house in the public school area with a 60% free/reduced lunch population.

But, because of the high level of poverty at the school - there is a state-mandated 15:1 maximum student/teacher ratio for grades K-3.

That makes all the difference in the world.

I thought all states had class-size caps for poorer schools, but as I read more, I realize that is not the case. It's certainly a good way to attract families of all backgrounds to the school and to ensure a good education for all kids.

Of course, our state's property taxes are sky-high....so there is a trade-off, I suppose.

The one thing that I've noticed about our school is the teachers. The kind of teacher who chooses to stay at a school where most of the kids are disadvantaged....well, that is exactly the kind of teacher I'd like for my kids. There is just a little "something extra" I've noticed about our teachers. It's hard to quantify in test scores or academics or even in words.

I'm sure they are exhausted and overworked and underpaid. But they have a level of care and commitment that before now, I've only seen in Hallmark-afterschool-special teachers.

And yet people still tell us that we are "brave" to try the school.

[Amy]

Did Calder grow up in Delaware? Me, too. I was sent to private school starting in 5th grade. I live in California now, and my kids will attend the local public school. (They are not school-age yet). Our neighborhood is historically solidly working class, but with the ridiculous housing boom in LA, now has become quite desirable. We moved in 5 years ago; now our home would sell for more than double what we bought it for. Many young families have moved in the last 5 years, and as a result, the school has much improved. And now the neighborhood is unaffordable for anyone but the wealthy. (We certainly couldn't afford to buy our house today).

[Anjali]

Oh this post is so timely for me, and we have just made the same type of decision for our move to the red clay state.