The persistent underfunding. Everyone who can afford to send their children to private school will do so because OK public schools are plain awful. Of course it's impossible to raise taxes to attract any sort of decent teacher or buy equipment or even paint because it's Oklahoma, no one is using public school anyway, so why fund it.
But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews.
> But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews.
I went to Catholic school, and politically, they certainly seem to be for restricting other people’s freedoms (see abstinence only sex education, gay marriage, and abortion). My whole sex education at the age of 14 or so was a slideshow of genital herpes or sores and “don’t do it”.
There’s also the whole decades long organizational support of child molestation issue that one might want to avoid supporting.
At least the official position of the Catholic Church isn't biblical literalism, so you won't get the A-Beka crap. The Presbyterians down here in my village in Alabama inflict the stuff on the poor kids.
I grew up Catholic in a tradition where the social responsibility was taken seriously (also see here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolpingwerk). We didn't have the abstinence-only nonsense either, that must be particular to certain regions in the US. BTW, the Catholic position is that marriage is a sacrament that the couple administers to each other (the only sacrament where a priest is not needed), and, well, sex is complicated, and all sorts of Reddit drama happens when FWBs catch feelings & so on. This was actually how the subject was treated in school.
The recent child abuse revelations are disappointing. I always said that child abuse isn't confined to catholics, but the hierarchy at least provides some oversight that you don't have in megachurches, but it's clear that that did not happen, it was a total failure up to the Pope.
Surely there must be a few good schools. I grew up in Tennessee and there were 4 or 5 good high schools in the state, one for each of the major cities plus an extra one due to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They also happened to be in the suburbs where the foreigners (i.e. everyone hadn't grown up in the area) were placed. But yes, public schools are chronically underfunded in the "red" states.
1. See the part of that comment where Okalahoma can't even keep many of their public schools open 5 days a week. And then guess at the quality of the ones that do stay open...
2. Screw the emotional/psycho-sexual abuse of Catholic schools.
I love the lower midwest, but god... even the "good" school districts in the "wealthy" suburbs are... not great.
But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews.