Really appreciate this. My mental rejoinder to people who say “I heard this isn’t a good school” or “I hear the schools are good in (usually Park Slope)” is “Define good.” Everyone prioritizes different things for themselves and their kids but to me, perhaps the most important thing I can give my daughter (whose is white, stably housed and the child of two parents with college and post-graduate degrees, which are the greatest predictors of her future educational outcomes) is an environment where not everyone is like her, and she experiences that as normal.
Yes! I choose a public school for my kiddo with a low Great Schools rating of 3. Because those ratings don't tell the whole picture. They tell me how the other kids are doing, not how my kid will score. The 10/10 schools filled with mostly white kids don't give my child the opportunity to learn some very important parts of what schooling should offer: the value of diversity (economic, racial); development of empathy for different lived experiences; exposure to more languages than English. He's in (public) high school now and I wouldn't change a thing.
I really appreciate the conversation you’re trying to have here! We’re not free until we’re all free, and that starts with education. Of course, there are a million individual reasons why a school might not be a “good fit”. I wish more families would at least try the “good enough” school before deciding to move - like this piece articulates.
Oof, I'm so glad you wrote about this, especially because of the individualities and tensions you've described in the post and comments. The choice about where to send your kid to school is personal, and feels personal... which I think makes it seem like that choice has nothing to do with broader societal norms and trends.
My son goes to our neighborhood public elementary school, which would probably fall under the category of "good enough". I like the school, his teachers, the district, our neighborhood, etc. In our area, there is a distinct trend of suburban flight once middle- to upper-class households have kids, or when there kids are old enough for kindergarten and a final flight for many parents once the kids reach middle school. You can trace a line from their urban neighborhood out to the suburbs. So it isn't JUST an individual decision, but part of a larger trend and hollowing out of our city.
I appreciate that you aren't prescriptive here - though I want to be! I want to just shout, please don't move! Please don't switch school districts! But there are lots of reasons for folks to do that, so I appreciate your gentle reminder that... maybe they don't have to.
People are always surprised that our son goes to public school in our city. There's a massive racial dynamic and set of assumptions here too that can't be ignored, and the conversations can get really tricky. Thanks for hosting this one.
This article is talking about two separate concepts as if they are the same.
First there's the distinction between "good enough" schools and "the best" schools. On this point I agree with the article. The diminishing returns of the stress and difficulties of affording a town like Lexington (the best suburban school in the Boston area) are not worth the difference in education qualify compared to the surrounding towns which are often much more affordable with only slightly worse schools.
Second there's the point about "moving to the suburbs for the schools." The article equates such a move with sending ones kids to the absolute best schools (like Lexington) ... but that's obviously not the reality of things? The vast majority of people moving from the city proper to the suburbs are going to middle class suburbs with decent but not exceptional schools ... i.e., "good enough" schools.
Frankly the sort of "good enough neighbourhood schools" that you describe - where you can send your kids and know that they're learning the things they should be learning, are safe, and are overseen by teachers who care with an administration that enables that care - are only attainable in the suburbs in most american cities.
To actually make the points you're trying to make, I think you should frame this as a discussion of what a "good enough" suburban school looks like, and then present an actual argument that those same features are currently available in city neighbourhood schools.
This rhetorical strategy of equating trying to get your kids in the absolute best schools, to moving so that your kids can go to a good enough school, doesn't actually do anything to convince parents that they should stay in the city.
Both your and Michael Llweyn's comment are similar. My piece is not really about choosing Lexington vs. Boston. It's about people not realizing that they could raise their kid in Boston if they knew it had good enough schools. I don't think a lot of people realize that. And I think most people think they have to move to a suburb to find a good enough school.
You may be overlooking that when parents think of "city public schools" what they actually take issue with is their relatively wealthy, white child being a minority, either by race or by class. That's something many parents don't say, but are thinking.
The important issue here is if inner city schools actually have more discipline problems and a more disrupted learning environment than suburban schools.
Everything I’ve seen and experienced suggests that this is broadly true in many American cities (not always true, not true in every city).
If you want a chill school where most kids follow the rules and pay attention in class - and disruptive kids are removed - then people believe that you have to go to the suburbs as inner city school administrations are unwilling to discipline problem students.
I believe it is fair and reasonable for a parent to prefer that their kid have a positive learning experience, so the task of someone trying to convince parents that their kid should go to their neighbourhood city school is to convince parents that the neighbourhood city school don’t have the behavior problems that they are perceived by most people to have.
This tendency to instead just accuse parents of racism is unproductive and helps no one.
I find rhetoric about "removing" disruptive kids or idealizing an environment where it's important for children to be obedient above all a bit strange, especially in discussions about a school system that's intended to prioritize educating all children—not just the acquiescent ones. It smacks of "let's just get the homeless people out of sight so everyone else feels comfortable," and I think that's a bad instinct.
Also I'm not accusing anyone of racism—I'm telling you there are studies to this effect where parents DO prioritize a majority white class population over other factors. (These studies aren't hard to find.)
Disruptive kids are a problem because they consume the teachers time and attention, thereby preventing the teacher from teaching the rests of the class.
My partner teaches at a school with discipline issues. She deals with a kid who shouts out randomly during lecture every day that the school refuses to do anything about. His presence ruins the class period for the rest of the students (they perform significantly worse on exams than her other periods).
I agree that this is a difficult problem and that just "removing" the kid isn't the right solution. But at the same time I don't blame parents for wanting to send their kids to schools where they don't have to deal with problems like that.
Also, sure, I bet a bunch of parents to prioritize a majority white class population ... but that doesn't mean you get to assume that anyone that's concerned about school quality / class environment is actually just dog-whistling about race (which is the accusation that you're making).
To sum up my argument to prevent misunderstanding :
I think that the main reason parents choose suburban schools over urban schools is the common perception that urban schools have unaddressed discipline problems / kids constantly acting out which disrupts class time and makes it harder for their kids to learn.
Therefore, to convince these parents that they don't need to move to the suburbs to have kids we have to convince them that actually their urban school is identical to the suburban school they were considering (lots of suburban schools have plenty of discipline problems and plenty of urban schools are well run). My original comment is trying to highlight that Diana doesn't actually make this argument anywhere and therefore this article won't accomplish its stated goal of trying to convince parents to stay in the city.
As an aside, I really don't care about the racist parents. Why not let them move to the suburbs and send their kids to dull homogenous schools? I think the urbanist movements goal should be to convince quality parents who's values are similar to ours - but who move to the suburbs anyways - that actually they can stay in the city. It's highly unlikely that we will ever reach or convince the sort of parent that cares about the racial makeup of their kids classes that they should stay in the city (do they even live in the city?) and I don't think we actually want them anywhere near our kids.
It's the view that most people have that we have to actually argue against if we want people to send their kids to city schools.
Simply asserting that people are wrong to view city schools as having discipline problems without actually providing any arguments or data to prove the assertion isn't going to change anyones behavior. I would much prefer a version of this post that went something like "I pulled to chronic absenteeism and classroom disruption rates from all the elementary schools in <Suburban school district> and <City school district> and you can see that they are roughly the same / that many City schools are actually better".
Frankly, without the data (or even an attempt to deal with the actual reasons people move to the suburbs when they have kids) this post just feels like an attempt to shame parents that decide to move to the suburbs based on their perceptions of city schools. Such shame tactics are ineffective to will only increase the polarization of raising your kids in the city.
Data only tells part of the story about any school. I would wager that most people who choose suburbs over cities for schools, and many who choose private schools over public schools in cities, don’t spent a ton of time looking at data and maybe even less visiting public schools. Data may speak to you but that’s not a universal quality and it’s not realistic to think that that alone will change
Peoples’ deeply seated, emotional and let’s say it—biased—opinions about what constitutes a good school and what is good enough for their child.
1. It implies a dichotomy between excellent suburban schools (e.g. Bryn Mawr) and "good enough" urban schools, as if those are the only choices. But I suspect that most suburban schools aren't as good as Bryn Mawr but have better reputations than most urban schools. So for most parents the OK-but-not-perfect option might be in a suburb.
2. I don't think that most suburban parents think that urban schools are "good enough." Instead, the mental map of most parents is, I suspect, something like: 1) Great schools- elite suburbs, 2) Good enough schools- most other suburbs 3) Bad schools- urban schools generally, as well as some suburbs that are too poor to be in category 2. To put it another way, the typical "good enough" school (from the standpoint of suburban parents) is in a middle-middle-class drive-to-qualify suburb, not an urban core.
These are good points! I would say though that many people are urban young adults before they are suburban parents. And they make all the assumptions you laid out, never even considering that a good enough school could be in a city. They assume all city schools are bad, and the good enough options only exist in the suburbs.
I wonder if this conversation is partially difficult to have because people's individual schools are just that: super individualized. I'm of many minds on this topic.
Our public school system (Grand Rapids Public Schools) has a lot of committed families...and it still hasn't moved the needle. In fact, it's gotten quite a bit worse. I was one of the families that was very on board with the "good enough" logic. Until, the good enough also DID mean dealing with regular violence, unfortunately. Violence, of course, can happen anywhere. But to suggest that if everyone commits really ignores the lack of accountability that school boards and school administration play (at least in our city).
I'd be very cool with a mediocre academic education for our children. What I'm uncool with is the blighted buildings, playgrounds, under communication regarding violence (guns being brought to school), secretive meetings, centralized power. This things don't seem to plague our suburban schools. Can you help us understand some of the nuance that goes beyond "just keep your kid there" ?
All good points! Yeah, I hear that. And I was trying to say at the end of the piece that I don't think this works for everyone all the time. Maybe the school wasn't actually "good enough." I don't think there's any point in just keeping your kid somewhere that's not working for you -- "just keep your kid there" is not my suggestion. My suggestion is to try it. Maybe you tried it and it didn't work.
PS I really appreciate your column and am very pro-housing in my own backyard and am a serious advocate for protected cycling infrastructure. School is just the one nut I can't seem to crack.
Oh, so nice to hear! Yeah I was a bit scared to send this post out to be honest -- and am still not sure how it will land. But I appreciate the encouragement. And yeah, if solving the public school situation were easy, well, our cities would be completely different...
Just teach my kids how to read. But then CMSD like abandoned its mission for an entire year plus and I was like yeah this is sorta a deal breaker for me. Paying $700 a month to send him to daycare three days a week to learn on zoom post vaccines was just absurd failed state nonsense. Not even trying to provide an adequate service
I know, I know. Massive public school fail in the pandemic. I was hoping the point was taken that this is not a solution for everyone, but it could be for more people. I wanted to get something larger out there because we have gone back and forth a bit about this topic on Substack, and again, my point is just like: not for everyone, could be for more people.
The other thing is, it really depends on the kid. If your kid has a disability for eg, it’s a lot more complicated. People have different philosophies about this but we need more energy going into improving urban schools than we’ve got rn imo
This is something I've been thinking about a lot, especially since my husband and I moved to Jersey City, and then Harlem, where we're happily raising our toddler. We're surrounded by parents and peers and family members who have left the city "for schools," plan to leave, or have nothing but critical things to say about our school zone (which is, of course, majority Black). We have friends already paying a premium for private daycare or private school. We just don't have that option, for one thing, but also we chose where we live because we want to live there, and also we can afford it. I'm excited for my son to grow up in his community and neighborhood instead of being shuttled to a "good" school in another neighborhood, or to uproot him to a more expensive area for no reason. It's caused some tension in conversations with friends and neighbors, and I'm grateful to see it isn't just me.
Really appreciate this. My mental rejoinder to people who say “I heard this isn’t a good school” or “I hear the schools are good in (usually Park Slope)” is “Define good.” Everyone prioritizes different things for themselves and their kids but to me, perhaps the most important thing I can give my daughter (whose is white, stably housed and the child of two parents with college and post-graduate degrees, which are the greatest predictors of her future educational outcomes) is an environment where not everyone is like her, and she experiences that as normal.
Yes! I choose a public school for my kiddo with a low Great Schools rating of 3. Because those ratings don't tell the whole picture. They tell me how the other kids are doing, not how my kid will score. The 10/10 schools filled with mostly white kids don't give my child the opportunity to learn some very important parts of what schooling should offer: the value of diversity (economic, racial); development of empathy for different lived experiences; exposure to more languages than English. He's in (public) high school now and I wouldn't change a thing.
I really appreciate the conversation you’re trying to have here! We’re not free until we’re all free, and that starts with education. Of course, there are a million individual reasons why a school might not be a “good fit”. I wish more families would at least try the “good enough” school before deciding to move - like this piece articulates.
Oof, I'm so glad you wrote about this, especially because of the individualities and tensions you've described in the post and comments. The choice about where to send your kid to school is personal, and feels personal... which I think makes it seem like that choice has nothing to do with broader societal norms and trends.
My son goes to our neighborhood public elementary school, which would probably fall under the category of "good enough". I like the school, his teachers, the district, our neighborhood, etc. In our area, there is a distinct trend of suburban flight once middle- to upper-class households have kids, or when there kids are old enough for kindergarten and a final flight for many parents once the kids reach middle school. You can trace a line from their urban neighborhood out to the suburbs. So it isn't JUST an individual decision, but part of a larger trend and hollowing out of our city.
I appreciate that you aren't prescriptive here - though I want to be! I want to just shout, please don't move! Please don't switch school districts! But there are lots of reasons for folks to do that, so I appreciate your gentle reminder that... maybe they don't have to.
People are always surprised that our son goes to public school in our city. There's a massive racial dynamic and set of assumptions here too that can't be ignored, and the conversations can get really tricky. Thanks for hosting this one.
This article is talking about two separate concepts as if they are the same.
First there's the distinction between "good enough" schools and "the best" schools. On this point I agree with the article. The diminishing returns of the stress and difficulties of affording a town like Lexington (the best suburban school in the Boston area) are not worth the difference in education qualify compared to the surrounding towns which are often much more affordable with only slightly worse schools.
Second there's the point about "moving to the suburbs for the schools." The article equates such a move with sending ones kids to the absolute best schools (like Lexington) ... but that's obviously not the reality of things? The vast majority of people moving from the city proper to the suburbs are going to middle class suburbs with decent but not exceptional schools ... i.e., "good enough" schools.
Frankly the sort of "good enough neighbourhood schools" that you describe - where you can send your kids and know that they're learning the things they should be learning, are safe, and are overseen by teachers who care with an administration that enables that care - are only attainable in the suburbs in most american cities.
To actually make the points you're trying to make, I think you should frame this as a discussion of what a "good enough" suburban school looks like, and then present an actual argument that those same features are currently available in city neighbourhood schools.
This rhetorical strategy of equating trying to get your kids in the absolute best schools, to moving so that your kids can go to a good enough school, doesn't actually do anything to convince parents that they should stay in the city.
Both your and Michael Llweyn's comment are similar. My piece is not really about choosing Lexington vs. Boston. It's about people not realizing that they could raise their kid in Boston if they knew it had good enough schools. I don't think a lot of people realize that. And I think most people think they have to move to a suburb to find a good enough school.
You may be overlooking that when parents think of "city public schools" what they actually take issue with is their relatively wealthy, white child being a minority, either by race or by class. That's something many parents don't say, but are thinking.
The important issue here is if inner city schools actually have more discipline problems and a more disrupted learning environment than suburban schools.
Everything I’ve seen and experienced suggests that this is broadly true in many American cities (not always true, not true in every city).
If you want a chill school where most kids follow the rules and pay attention in class - and disruptive kids are removed - then people believe that you have to go to the suburbs as inner city school administrations are unwilling to discipline problem students.
I believe it is fair and reasonable for a parent to prefer that their kid have a positive learning experience, so the task of someone trying to convince parents that their kid should go to their neighbourhood city school is to convince parents that the neighbourhood city school don’t have the behavior problems that they are perceived by most people to have.
This tendency to instead just accuse parents of racism is unproductive and helps no one.
I find rhetoric about "removing" disruptive kids or idealizing an environment where it's important for children to be obedient above all a bit strange, especially in discussions about a school system that's intended to prioritize educating all children—not just the acquiescent ones. It smacks of "let's just get the homeless people out of sight so everyone else feels comfortable," and I think that's a bad instinct.
Also I'm not accusing anyone of racism—I'm telling you there are studies to this effect where parents DO prioritize a majority white class population over other factors. (These studies aren't hard to find.)
Disruptive kids are a problem because they consume the teachers time and attention, thereby preventing the teacher from teaching the rests of the class.
My partner teaches at a school with discipline issues. She deals with a kid who shouts out randomly during lecture every day that the school refuses to do anything about. His presence ruins the class period for the rest of the students (they perform significantly worse on exams than her other periods).
I agree that this is a difficult problem and that just "removing" the kid isn't the right solution. But at the same time I don't blame parents for wanting to send their kids to schools where they don't have to deal with problems like that.
Also, sure, I bet a bunch of parents to prioritize a majority white class population ... but that doesn't mean you get to assume that anyone that's concerned about school quality / class environment is actually just dog-whistling about race (which is the accusation that you're making).
To sum up my argument to prevent misunderstanding :
I think that the main reason parents choose suburban schools over urban schools is the common perception that urban schools have unaddressed discipline problems / kids constantly acting out which disrupts class time and makes it harder for their kids to learn.
Therefore, to convince these parents that they don't need to move to the suburbs to have kids we have to convince them that actually their urban school is identical to the suburban school they were considering (lots of suburban schools have plenty of discipline problems and plenty of urban schools are well run). My original comment is trying to highlight that Diana doesn't actually make this argument anywhere and therefore this article won't accomplish its stated goal of trying to convince parents to stay in the city.
As an aside, I really don't care about the racist parents. Why not let them move to the suburbs and send their kids to dull homogenous schools? I think the urbanist movements goal should be to convince quality parents who's values are similar to ours - but who move to the suburbs anyways - that actually they can stay in the city. It's highly unlikely that we will ever reach or convince the sort of parent that cares about the racial makeup of their kids classes that they should stay in the city (do they even live in the city?) and I don't think we actually want them anywhere near our kids.
I think you paint urban American schools with a very broad brush that basically enforces the points that the author was trying to make.
It's the view that most people have that we have to actually argue against if we want people to send their kids to city schools.
Simply asserting that people are wrong to view city schools as having discipline problems without actually providing any arguments or data to prove the assertion isn't going to change anyones behavior. I would much prefer a version of this post that went something like "I pulled to chronic absenteeism and classroom disruption rates from all the elementary schools in <Suburban school district> and <City school district> and you can see that they are roughly the same / that many City schools are actually better".
Frankly, without the data (or even an attempt to deal with the actual reasons people move to the suburbs when they have kids) this post just feels like an attempt to shame parents that decide to move to the suburbs based on their perceptions of city schools. Such shame tactics are ineffective to will only increase the polarization of raising your kids in the city.
Data only tells part of the story about any school. I would wager that most people who choose suburbs over cities for schools, and many who choose private schools over public schools in cities, don’t spent a ton of time looking at data and maybe even less visiting public schools. Data may speak to you but that’s not a universal quality and it’s not realistic to think that that alone will change
Peoples’ deeply seated, emotional and let’s say it—biased—opinions about what constitutes a good school and what is good enough for their child.
There are two things that bothered me about this:
1. It implies a dichotomy between excellent suburban schools (e.g. Bryn Mawr) and "good enough" urban schools, as if those are the only choices. But I suspect that most suburban schools aren't as good as Bryn Mawr but have better reputations than most urban schools. So for most parents the OK-but-not-perfect option might be in a suburb.
2. I don't think that most suburban parents think that urban schools are "good enough." Instead, the mental map of most parents is, I suspect, something like: 1) Great schools- elite suburbs, 2) Good enough schools- most other suburbs 3) Bad schools- urban schools generally, as well as some suburbs that are too poor to be in category 2. To put it another way, the typical "good enough" school (from the standpoint of suburban parents) is in a middle-middle-class drive-to-qualify suburb, not an urban core.
These are good points! I would say though that many people are urban young adults before they are suburban parents. And they make all the assumptions you laid out, never even considering that a good enough school could be in a city. They assume all city schools are bad, and the good enough options only exist in the suburbs.
I wonder if this conversation is partially difficult to have because people's individual schools are just that: super individualized. I'm of many minds on this topic.
Our public school system (Grand Rapids Public Schools) has a lot of committed families...and it still hasn't moved the needle. In fact, it's gotten quite a bit worse. I was one of the families that was very on board with the "good enough" logic. Until, the good enough also DID mean dealing with regular violence, unfortunately. Violence, of course, can happen anywhere. But to suggest that if everyone commits really ignores the lack of accountability that school boards and school administration play (at least in our city).
I'd be very cool with a mediocre academic education for our children. What I'm uncool with is the blighted buildings, playgrounds, under communication regarding violence (guns being brought to school), secretive meetings, centralized power. This things don't seem to plague our suburban schools. Can you help us understand some of the nuance that goes beyond "just keep your kid there" ?
All good points! Yeah, I hear that. And I was trying to say at the end of the piece that I don't think this works for everyone all the time. Maybe the school wasn't actually "good enough." I don't think there's any point in just keeping your kid somewhere that's not working for you -- "just keep your kid there" is not my suggestion. My suggestion is to try it. Maybe you tried it and it didn't work.
That's fair. I appreciate the encouragement to try it before you write it off. That I can get on board with and definitely agree.
PS I really appreciate your column and am very pro-housing in my own backyard and am a serious advocate for protected cycling infrastructure. School is just the one nut I can't seem to crack.
Oh, so nice to hear! Yeah I was a bit scared to send this post out to be honest -- and am still not sure how it will land. But I appreciate the encouragement. And yeah, if solving the public school situation were easy, well, our cities would be completely different...
Just teach my kids how to read. But then CMSD like abandoned its mission for an entire year plus and I was like yeah this is sorta a deal breaker for me. Paying $700 a month to send him to daycare three days a week to learn on zoom post vaccines was just absurd failed state nonsense. Not even trying to provide an adequate service
I know, I know. Massive public school fail in the pandemic. I was hoping the point was taken that this is not a solution for everyone, but it could be for more people. I wanted to get something larger out there because we have gone back and forth a bit about this topic on Substack, and again, my point is just like: not for everyone, could be for more people.
The other thing is, it really depends on the kid. If your kid has a disability for eg, it’s a lot more complicated. People have different philosophies about this but we need more energy going into improving urban schools than we’ve got rn imo
This is something I've been thinking about a lot, especially since my husband and I moved to Jersey City, and then Harlem, where we're happily raising our toddler. We're surrounded by parents and peers and family members who have left the city "for schools," plan to leave, or have nothing but critical things to say about our school zone (which is, of course, majority Black). We have friends already paying a premium for private daycare or private school. We just don't have that option, for one thing, but also we chose where we live because we want to live there, and also we can afford it. I'm excited for my son to grow up in his community and neighborhood instead of being shuttled to a "good" school in another neighborhood, or to uproot him to a more expensive area for no reason. It's caused some tension in conversations with friends and neighbors, and I'm grateful to see it isn't just me.