Mediocre Schools

I wrote earlier in this blog about the ridiculously high cost of preschools in San Francisco. Today I reviewed the achievement statistics for San Francisco schools, at least, the public schools; they were ridiculously low, with only a few exceptions.

San Francisco is, by and large, a city of rich people, at least when compared with the rest of the country. Why are the public schools performing at such a sub-par level? The only answers I can think of: most of the rich are sending their kids to private schools or are finagling their way into the best public schools. I also believe that a large percentage of the rich that live here do not have school-age children; at least anecdotally, a large percentage of those that do end up leaving San Francisco and heading south or north, to Marin or Palo Alto or Los Gatos, when their children reach the age of four or five. So the quality of San Francisco schools remains mediocre and no one raises much of a fuss about it.

I don't profess to be more noble than the rest of the population. We might choose to move south. It's hard to say at this point. But even if we do--the basic problem is there, stretching out like an ash cloud over my son's future. For it will be a future in which the United States is, more and more and more, a country of have-everythings and have-nothings. And the violent society this will help foster will impact every single one of us. I can't hide from that ugly fact by moving my son out of San Francisco, or moving my son into a private school within the city's borders.