Are public, free, and will provide that education without tutors. My wife grew up on a family salary of ~$25,000/year in the 00's and went to one of these schools and through the IB program was incredibly well prepared to get top GPA in a top-5 engineering undergrad.
A huge part of that was being surrounded by other also very smart people, and being constantly challenged by her high school teachers who set rigorous standards. You absolutely will not get that in a rural area, and you don't generally have to pay for it in areas where the houses themselves aren't close to free. If you want free land, you simply have to give up that quality of education.
Binning/exclusivity/stratification is as big or bigger part of that than the quality of the school's education.
What percentage of kids are served by schools of that caliber? 5%? 1%? That's not "access" to better education, it's selection bias.
>constantly challenged by her high school teachers who set rigorous standards. You absolutely will not get that in a rural area,
Rural life precludes having or setting high standards?
>you don't generally have to pay for it in areas where the houses themselves aren't close to free.
You're paying for it, whether you have kids or not. You just don't have the freedom of picking your child's educators without having to buy a new house and move to change school districts.
And that's presuming the rural school isn't sufficient, which is a loaded assumption all on its own.
Access is highly variable though and I'd go so far as to say it's the exception in cities rather than the norm. For example, Cambridge MA has one public high school and it's very much middle of the pack in the state with respect to testing outcomes. Though again it's probably a mistake to assign too much credit/blamr to the school anyway unless it's exceptionally bad.
- Westwood in Austin
- Lynbrook in SF
- Thomas Jefferson in Richmond
- IL Math & Science Academy in Chicago
- Clements High School in Houston
Are public, free, and will provide that education without tutors. My wife grew up on a family salary of ~$25,000/year in the 00's and went to one of these schools and through the IB program was incredibly well prepared to get top GPA in a top-5 engineering undergrad.
A huge part of that was being surrounded by other also very smart people, and being constantly challenged by her high school teachers who set rigorous standards. You absolutely will not get that in a rural area, and you don't generally have to pay for it in areas where the houses themselves aren't close to free. If you want free land, you simply have to give up that quality of education.