Best Cities for Education

For college maybe?

Raleigh-Durhan-Chapel Hill is called ‘Research Triangle Park’ and has more Ph.ds per capita than any other place in the country. If your child goes to school there, likely you’re a Ph.D and all your child’s little friends’ parents are too.

The bottom line is that the parents in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill are highly educated people. Their children are likely to be easy to educate as a consequence and such highly educated parents look to their children’s schools for educational excellence. I’m sure those parents keep the schools in that area on their toes.

Past that reality, there is no reality in this list. Newspapers like to write articles but whether the articles have merit or not is another thing. There is no way at present to compare schools to each other - especially across state lines. Within a state, you can get a very weak measurement of a school’s effectiveness by looking at the results of the state standardized tests that are now administered annually but as different states all use different tests, there’s no way to compare from state to state.

I guess they’re including the D.C. metro area- Fairfax County VA and Montgomery Co. MD— ‘cos D.C. schools are in crisis. Actually, I hear sped. there is in such a state that many parents are able to get the district to pay to send their kids to private schools in the suburbs- so maybe it’s not all bad!

I wonder what they based their criteria on—here in SF, 1/3 of the kids are in private school, there are a few good public schools, then there are the rest–The district is way underfunded—has wasted millions and millions of dollars over the last few years and is seriously out of compliance on special education—and they are trying to improve things but unless you get your child into the right school, forget it. No one can get into school based on where you live and so parents sweat out the enrollment process every year—and they change the rules every year.

Even if you still get in to a “good” school in SF. The special Ed is terrible. This district is so out of compliance, the state will not even ask the feds for the $$ they are entitled to.
That article has to be about college because college wise, it is a great place. Tons of good junior colleges as well as UC Berkely, SF State, USF etc…

Since we live 40 miles from SF seeing it on the list made me not believe the rest. The article did say it was beter for colleges then public school.

Helen

Also in the triangle are UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, and NC State…the first two are among the top schools in the country and State is not far behind.

Janis

percentage of population with a college/advanced degrees and has nothing to do with K-12.

n/m

Here’s their criteria - which I think wouldn’t adequately measure the quality of public K-12 education…

“In order to rate cities’ educational resources, Savageau looked at such criteria as local school funding (as opposed to state or federal funding); the mix of private and public schools; the student-to-teacher ratio; library popularity, which breaks down the reading habits of residents; the degrees offered by local colleges; and college options for local residents. “