It's interesting if that is the case in the US: it was also true in the UK in the 1980s and 90s with Central London having a reputation for poor schools.
However, today the UK situation is completely reversed and the narrative is more about why schools in the regions don't perform as well as schools in the capital.
One eye-opening statistic I read recently is that a disadvantaged/poor kid growing up in Hackney, East London (which is about as 'urban' as it gets here) is 3X more likely to go to university than a similarly disadvantaged kid growing up in the North of England.
That's how it is in the rural US.
We based this on:
0) We just really like the city and want to raise our kids in the city.
1) In Chicago, where we live, CPS students outperform the state overall. Source: https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/perception-vs-reality-c...
2) Breaking down a school's performance at the demographic level can often change the equation. The elementary school my son will attend actually scores higher for students above the poverty line than the one I attended out in the suburbs.
3) My wife is a STEM professor and has seen lots of students who attended the region's top-tier public schools (9/10 or 10/10 on greatschools, etc) that were woefully unprepared for college, despite otherwise decent ACT scores.
4) The suburbs are facing their own austerity crisis: postwar subsidized infrastructure gravy train is long over, so property taxes are rising. Their housing stock doesn't align well with the smaller and most cost-conscious millennial family. So a big worry for us was, do we want to buy into a "good school" suburb only to have our kid's school budget slashed to control costs? This is already happening to one Chicago suburb famous for its great schools (Hinsdale, IL)
5) School performance is, at best, a trailing indicator. Say you've got 2 kids under the age of 4. Is it worth buying a home somewhere because of a high school they won't be attending for 10+ years? It makes sense if you're talking about a radical difference in school performance, but marginal advantages seem prone to change.
I don't claim that this is the best course of action. For all we know, the city schools could just as easily go sideways due to budgeting issues, or maybe suburban schools are the first to break free from the trend of "teaching to the test" and our kids are left behind. But right now, it just feels like once you have a safe learning environment and some basic academic standards, most of the outcome is in the hands of the parents and students. High-performing schools don't produce great students so much as they attract the people who foster that attitude.
Uptown is amazing and while it is still rough around the edges it is easily one my favorite neighborhoods in the city. The crime is slowly getting better, but I think most parents of means send their kids to private school or lottery them somewhere else.... or move.
So their options are:
1) Take their child to the next closest and available school which is 30 minutes away
2) Pay for private school - which, as you can imagine, is expensive
3) Move
They're ultimately choosing #1, but I can easily imagine them getting sick of that quickly.
Oh well, I guess it's better than SF's system. Can't even imagine dealing with that.
This seems to be in the same category as not letting a child walk alone to school, in a Western country, because of fear of Islamic terrorists -- possible, but so unlikely it is statistically improbable.
This is basically been the case for decades in the U.S.
Other countries seem to get by just fine with living in cities and having kids.
Other countries don't concentrate all their disadvantaged people in the cities.
With that said, it's perhaps possible that millennial pushing for changes and upgrades and improvements and the fundamental human right of quality education for all might not yield an ideal outcome. Improving schools can very reasonably be expected to be multi-decade project of changing budgets, priorities, staffing, training, expectations, culture, and more. Someone with a toddler might want quality schools in the next three years instead of next thirty. This might, for some, incentivize a different set of somewhat more selfish reactions.
You're completely right. Millenials can, should, and are morally obligated to push for improvements and upgrades. But there may be a wrinkle or three.
With that said, is it possible that high-potential children could be viewed as something other than interchangeable widgets whose primary purpose is to make public schools that are failing many students look good? Especially given that such schools are often little better at meeting the needs of the high-potential children than they are all of the other children.
You're right. Charter schools are often guilty of creaming. Yet, are we doing anyone a favor by sacrificing the education of high-potential children to mask problems?