unstyledcontent 5 days ago

I read thst San Francisco decided not to offer Algebra until high school so no one would feel left behind. One of those dystopian decisions that emerged from a well intentioned DEI initiative. A decision that defies logic and surprise didn't help. That would be enough of a red flag for me. https://priceonomics.com/why-did-san-francisco-schools-stop-...

aurareturn 5 days ago

You could literally live next to a school and there’s a chance your kids can’t go there.

There are many kids from low income, broken families who are just really bad students. Bullies. Disruptive. Disrespectful to teachers. It was hell going through public schools in SF.

  • cratermoon 5 days ago

    So it's "opt out of being around average people", then?

    • typewithrhythm 5 days ago

      Average people aim to provide a good a start for their kids as possible; average aims to avoid public school if possible. You now only have a set of people defined by behaviour or ability too poor for private, parents who don't care, or ones with no options...

      Basically it's opting out of being around the dregs

      • cratermoon 4 days ago

        Am I correct in reading this as you saying poor people and the ones with no options are "dregs"?

        • aurareturn 3 days ago

          I'm not sure what your point is. All parents want to send their kids to the best schools. They buy expensive real estate for this reason. There is a very clear, unspoken reason why parents want to avoid poor areas for schools.

          SF has a lottery system. This means all kids in the city are mixed. Unfortunately, my experience was absolutely horrible for learning.

    • resonious 4 days ago

      If the average student is a bully, disruptive, and disrespectful to teachers then I think I might actually opt out of being around average people if possible.

    • cyberax 4 days ago

      And what's so bad about it? Mind you, it's not just 'being around', but "being stuck with them for 30% of your life for years in a situation out of your control".

    • Meekro 3 days ago

      Average people are cool. We're trying to opt out of being around the bottom 10%.

nineplay 5 days ago

I wonder the same thing, I have friends who send their kids there and are happy with it. Not surprisingly for SF, most of the parents are educated with good incomes and expect their kids to go to college. That has its own set of downsides of course, but you could do a lot worse.

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yodsanklai 5 days ago

Don't know why this is downvoted, seems like a reasonable question. I don't know much about SF or public schools in the US. Are they all bad? do we have data comparing public/private schools in these areas?

  • rahimnathwani 4 days ago

    Public and private schools don't take the same tests, so we don't have good days to compare the schools. Even if we did, it would be hard to disentangle the impact of selection bias.

    You could look at college acceptances or similar, but those aren't unbiased either, as colleges look at estimates of class rank, not just absolute performance.