First, eb_guy is right about the social problems. Many kids in these school don’t really care–but most importantly, there is no “care” coming from home. In fact, I experienced some outright hostility from some parents who thought that school was a waste of time, and coming to a parent-teacher meeting was just stupid. After all, “teachers don’t know anything” and they’re just “making things hard for these kids”.

Great, huh?

Another thing: Big city districts have HUGE school boards full of divisive members who most often can’t get along. Further, everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is racially motivated, especially when it comes from minority members. Their agenda is often just different from everyone else’s. In my case, I observed that their main goals were to lower standards, eliminate state-derived competency tests, and get kids passed on regardless of grades (which should all be reformulated SO THAT nearly everyones passes).

You know the expression, “Too many chefs spoil the soup”? Well this is a great example. These large devisive boards can’t get much done.

One solution is to break up the large districts, and put them under state control for, say, five years–before returning them to local control.