[burningChrome]

Not in my state.

- My kids attend a suburban public school:

Cost per student: $15K/year

Graduation rate: 93%

Students who commit or are accepted into 2 sand 4 year colleges: 90%+

- Compare that with just one school in the urban school system:

Cost per student: $37K/year

Graduation rate: 57%

Students who commit or are accepted into 2 sand 4 year colleges: less than 50%

Just to throw some more fire on this, the teachers in the last two years in those urban districts? They've gotten substantial raises and large increases in spending from the state legislature. The last standardized test results post C19? The kids in those schools were forced into lengthy closures during C19 and were the last schools to re-open (months after all the suburban schools had already been open with in person attendance) amounted to their students REGRESSING by multiple percentage points.

So no, after watching this first hand with myself and my sisters kids who were yanked out of an urban public school as freshman; urban students and schools receive considerably more than their suburban counterparts and are still lagging significantly behind them.

[the_gastropod]

That's an anecdote, no? No idea where you live (guessing New Jersey?). But do you think there might be other differences beyond just the $/student that might explain some of those differences? What're the poverty levels of those urban children vs their suburban counterparts?

[burningChrome]

Not an anecdote.

Its Minnesota. The numbers were off to from the last time I checked them. Its now 13K for my kids school and 26K for the Minneapolis schools.

>> But do you think there might be other differences beyond just the $/student that might explain some of those differences?

Well yeah. - Poor families can't afford to send their kids to private schools. - Poor families don't have any vouchers or charter schools as alternatives - Poor families cannot be bused to other, better school districts like mine or other suburban schools - Most poor families are single parent homes which means driving kids to far off suburban schools is not an option - Many suburban schools are closing their enrollment unless you live in the district now.

The educational SYSTEM is what keeps poor families without any options to give their kids a better shot at being educated and going on to a 2 year or 4 year college. When you have no options, then you're stuck. This makes no sense to me why this is a political issue. Don't you want kids to have the best opportunity to be successful? Why not open up to vouchers and charter schools? Why does the Minneapolis school system refuse to allow this? The answer is too obvious to require elaboration. Its because their enrollment (which has already dropped precipitously over the last decade) would drop off even more. This would then mean lose a ton of funding from the state.

At the end of the day, the MPS does not want competition because it means less money then from the state, even with the abysmal graduation rate, falling enrollment and tens of thousands of people moving out of the Hennepin County, they continue to refuse to change anything - which is pretty depressing when you think about it.