Nikita Bush's career as a public school teacher came to an end when she faced the decision of how to educate her own children. Having been told for years that American public schools would eventually get better for black children, the number of African-American homeschooling parents like Ms. Bush has doubled in little over a decade.
As Patrick Jonsson of the Christian Science monitor reports, studies show all kinds of public school problems disproportionately affect black children, and many parents have decided to take matters into their own hands. Even single parents are forming co-ops to make it possible to educate their children together outside of the public school system.
What do you do when you feel the system is failing your child and their education?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 22 2016, @01:33PM
It depends a lot on where you live.
Where I was growing up, while the public schools definitely had their problems, my public high school was doing a much better job than their private counterparts by any reasonable measurement, including college admission, AP credit, vocational training, and English language training for recent refugees (mostly from Iraq and Bosnia back when I was attending). There are also public school systems that routinely send something like 20% of their graduating class to Ivy League schools. And public exam and magnet schools like Stuyvesant (in New York City) and Boston Latin that also do a top-notch job.
In other areas, the public schools absolutely do suck and are barely managing to approximately reach the state- and federally-mandated minimums, with the dropout rates and failure rates and suspension numbers to prove it.
Private schools have even more variation in quality: The top prep schools can afford to get the best teachers in the country (frequently with doctorates in their field), while the worst private schools are able to skimp on everything because they have much lower legal standards to meet.
It's basically impossible to make a useful blanket judgment as to the quality of public versus private schools, because every single local district and most private schools are under completely separate management.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.