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I think people anguish too much about the schools....many are good. A lot depends on your child, his or her native intelligence and also aptitude and talents. Parents are desperate to get to the number one top schools thinking this will ensure a person's success and its not so. I'm not saying go to bad schools, but to mince hairs on some of these schools is ridiculous. Pick a good one, and a nice place to live and don't worry about it.
I totally agree. I went to "bad" elementary and middle schooles (Glendale Heights distrct 15). My sisters did as well. All of us got into good colleges and have had solid careers. I believe we all could have gone into any career we wanted to pursue including things like medicine, law, engineering, business, etc. I don't think my life would be any different if I had attended New Trier or Hinsdale Central. It's hard to believe I'd be more well off than I am, anyway.
I totally agree. I went to "bad" elementary and middle schooles (Glendale Heights distrct 15). My sisters did as well. All of us got into good colleges and have had solid careers. I believe we all could have gone into any career we wanted to pursue including things like medicine, law, engineering, business, etc. I don't think my life would be any different if I had attended New Trier or Hinsdale Central. It's hard to believe I'd be more well off than I am, anyway.
On the one hand I do agree that if you are of a generation that is probably familar with first voting in races between Bush & Dukakis or something close then odds are just going through a high school that allowed you to knock out all the prerequisities for college (and getting reasonably good grades / acceptable ACT scores...) was probably enough to have a pretty wide range of colleges available to you AND subsequently have a pretty nice of potential career paths unfold after college.
Along with those forces I do believe that the separation of the "good enough" high schools from the "very good" high schools has became more noticeable. Things like how many kids successfully complete AP courses, which have proven to be a good indicator for the likelihood of students experiencing success in college is increasingly needed not just to gain admission to "top tier" colleges BUT EVEN very desirable schools like the UIUC...
Sure, it is entirely possible to still have a very nice career / good life going to someplace like Western Illinois BUT since it costs essentally the SAME to attend UIUC and the placement numbers are considerably better in higher paying field include CS, Accouting, Engineering, etc it just makes a lot of sense to try to aim higher.
To be sure if a student is exceptionally motivated and ends up setting the curve while taking all honors classes and distinquishing themselves in extracurricululars at say Lake Park High School it is hard to say that they would have substantially fewer options than if they were in the top 5% or so of their class at more historically well regarded high school. Of course that presupposes some things that are really hard to say apply to more than a handful of kids -- namely that they'd be a "top tier" kind of kid both academics & extracurriculars...
Much more likely (in either a very desirable town or some place not as historically desirable) is for kids to be closer to the middle. And here is where things often get really interesting. In my experience kids that want to "try out" a few honors classes and end up just doing "average" in extracurriculars SEEM to be better off at schools that have sufficient offering that can have very good honors teachers and nice extracurriculars for a variety of kids. That generally is easier done at schools that have more resources AND I believe there is no real arguement that the schools with better resources in our region are those in more affluent areas...
Given the likelihood of continued numbers of kids POURING out of middle-of-the-road colleges and really facingf VERY challenging career propects the bottomline is makes sense to aim for the best high school which will afford the most students the best shot at the broadest range of college.
(There is also a whole other school of thought too -- if have a REALLY talented kid and really want to aim for a true "long shot" type school maybe it does makes sense to try to "game the system" by deliberating choosing to live way downstate or in the hinterlands of a neighboring rural state -- the "geographic diversity compononent" of the selection committes at the true "top tier" schools is probably going to look a lot more favorably on a kid from a town that is more known for having lots of kids enter livestock in the county faire than being a funnel to the Ivy League. This presupposes that the kid really does have the talent to get into IMSA or at least max out on all the necessary classes that a rural area might not be able to support. Given the broader access to higher level courses via the internet this may be more viable option....)
Well, I graduated high school in 2000 and my sisters are both younger. Two of us went to UIUC and our other sister went to SIU on s full scholarship (academic). Nearly everyone I was friends with in middle school in district 15 went to UIUC as well.
My best friend from elementary and middle school ended up going to IMSA (then UIUC) and did very well, even after spending 8 years in a bad district. So, from my perspective if a kid is smart and education is emphasized at home you can do just fine in a school that isn't the absolute greatest.
Maybe everyone I know is an anomaly. Most of us were the first in our families to attend college. I know at least 20 people from elementary and middle school in the same boat. Not everyone was making six figures by 30, I guess, but that was a goal I set for myself when I was young and I didn't have trouble reaching it.
Well, I graduated high school in 2000 and my sisters are both younger. Two of us went to UIUC and our other sister went to SIU on s full scholarship (academic). Nearly everyone I was friends with in middle school in district 15 went to UIUC as well.
My best friend from elementary and middle school ended up going to IMSA (then UIUC) and did very well, even after spending 8 years in a bad district. So, from my perspective if a kid is smart and education is emphasized at home you can do just fine in a school that isn't the absolute greatest.
Maybe everyone I know is an anomaly. Most of us were the first in our families to attend college. I know at least 20 people from elementary and middle school in the same boat. Not everyone was making six figures by 30, I guess, but that was a goal I set for myself when I was young and I didn't have trouble reaching it.
I am glad things worked out well for and your classmates. I suspect you're all a testament to the drive often associated with "first to attend college". My hunch is the stability of staying put and having like minded friends was beneficial to all of you.
The increasingly competive environment for college admissions and rising costs will no doubt mean that kids with the most impressive credentials will be most likely to garner the best offers. I would hope that your career success motivates you, when the time comes, to find a suitable environment for your family.
I am glad things worked out well for and your classmates. I suspect you're all a testament to the drive often associated with "first to attend college". My hunch is the stability of staying put and having like minded friends was beneficial to all of you.
The increasingly competive environment for college admissions and rising costs will no doubt mean that kids with the most impressive credentials will be most likely to garner the best offers. I would hope that your career success motivates you, when the time comes, to find a suitable environment for your family.
My main point is that if a student is driven and their parents are involved (which I suspect every parent posting about finding the best possible schools would be), being at the absolute best school is not going to be all that different from going to a pretty good school. The elemenatry and middle schools I attended are considered to be pretty bad, but the teachers there still cared. That's where my friends from that time learned to read and write and because we had dedicated parents and teachers we did well despite spending 8 years in silly open concept classrooms with other students that may not have been at the same level.
I definitely think having like-minded friends makes a tremendous difference. I think that's true regardless of where a kid goes to school. Even the top schools are not without their issues (like drug use, for example) and what your friends do, you will likely do as well when you're school-age.
My husband and I live in Elmhurst now and if we have kids they will go to the public schools here. There's no way we're moving just to get into a particular high school's boundaries. I think the schools in Elmhurst are more than good enough; certainly better than the small town high school my husband attended in Wisconsin and at least as good as the moldy St. Charles High School I attended.
I just don't think anyone needs to get so caught up on "the best" when what's best isn't the same for everyone anyway. I probably would have gotten lost in a high school like New Trier. My high GPA would be par for the course there. The only thing that my have stood out about me at all was that I got my first part time job at age 12 and I was never unemployed during high school.
When I think of the people I know that were either very successful in academia or with financial success (say, people with Ph.D's from top universities or people making more than $250,000 per year), most of them went to public schools that could be considered "mediocre". And I know a lot of kids from "uniformly affluent suburbs" who just took all of the advantages they were given and flushed them down the toilet. But I do think that top-ranked suburban and urban schools offer a level of college preparation that doesn't exist in a lot of mediocre or poor schools.
I am biased because I was always a straight-A student, so this may not apply to students who struggle in high school. But for smarter kids, I think that one of the most important factors in a high school is that it is challenging and offers a depth of class content that is commensurate with a Freshman college experience. This is where AP classes come in. My high school years were entirely in the early 90's (1990-1994), and my very mediocre public high school offered only two lousy AP courses based on the abilities of a couple of the teachers. I went to a large university, and immediately felt like I was behind the kids who were from top urban/suburban school districts around the Midwest and Northeast. While I struggled to balance Redox equations in Freshman chemistry, they already knew how to do it because of their high school AP chemistry. When I got a poor grade on a calculus exam that was quite a bit harder than the ones offered by my high school calculus course, they sailed right through.
I caught up after a year or two of college coursework, but I did watch many others drop out of the challenging program I was in. And I saw a lot of urban kids from bad schools just completely fail to get a foothold. So I do buy in to the idea that a better high school can provide better preparation for college. But at the end of the day, it's not the only factor that leads to success, and brains and hard work will go further than anything else.
At one time York High was on par with New Trier and generally regarded as more desirable than Hinsdale Central. That changed as the community support eroded, massive numbers of previously highly regarded staff were encouraged to take "early retirement" and were replaced by relatively unimpressive but far less costly new teachers.
The community support has largely been restored and though the demographics of the York student body and parents have shifted a bit they've made good progress in regaining some of the rigor they were known for. I'm sure if these trends continue to move in a positive direction you'll be in the right place to have kids meet with success.
I don't disagree that any especially motivated student with strong family support can successfully springboard out many of the schools that are just mediocre / even under-performing but when folks are looking to relocate the real cost differences in such situations make it foolish NOT to seek out the best performing area they can find. I still have more than a few friends on staff at New Trier and the unique structure of not just how the school is organized around student /teacher interaction but also the way that staff is selected / evaluated really makes it very unlikely that any students "get lost" -- of course there are kids with problems at home that actively avoid any positive interaction with teachers / staff, but from a legal standpoint the degree to which things cross the line requiring investigation / intervention is the limiting factor. Sure the folks that sell newspapers / edit web sites know that headline grabbing sensationalism is a big part of trying to stay solvent / grow their "click count" but having talked to not just educators but also folks deeply involved in law enforcement / child welfare /criminal justice the real problems of kids that get involved in drugs rarely match up with the full picture painted by folks that dig deeper.
(On a personal level I've stated before that things like literally having a nice short commute are one the most important positive ways to be sure that kids have enough parental contact and don't get sucked into a lot of the bad habits that are common among substance abusers. The fact that my wife and I both work and would have had a far longer commute was a big factor in why we choose to live inside the Hinsdale Central attendance area instead of NT. I truly believe that while academics are very very similar at both schools (as well as Stevenson in Lincolnshire and maybe a handful of other top tier schools too) things like the previously staff interactions make NT unique in our region for a public school, especially one that has such a large enrollment. These sorts of differences require parents in other high performing districts to "make up" for the sometimes less than ideal environment of other large schools and for the most part my experience is that caring parents with teenagers that understand these needs do end up helping their kids do just as well as they would at NT...)
The differences in not just the school environment and range of opportunities but the long term financial impacts of choosing an area that has many positive qualities for families just make tremendous sense compared to choosing a place that is too far out...
Re: LK's comments about preparation and rigorous high schools
I think LK knows that his experience is EXACTLY why the well regarded US News & World Report high school rankings exist -- the research behind the rankings is based PRIMARLY on the excellent work that shows precisely what he experienced: many kids that attempt to take challenging course in better colleges experience failure / defeat. Kids that have come from rigorous high schools where they tackled some of these topics in AP classes have a MUCH BETTER record of college success. The value of merely having "access" to those course (which has been the basis of the less valuable Washington Post rankings...) is not as good as measuring how many of the kids that took AP classes ended up with scores that showed they had actually mastered college level coursework in the AP class. The fact is there are a just a handful of poorer schools that even have staff up to the challenge of teaching AP courses -- that is what the Jaime Escalante story told in Stand And Deliver so unusual / note worthy!
At one time York High was on par with New Trier and generally regarded as more desirable than Hinsdale Central. That changed as the community support eroded, massive numbers of previously highly regarded staff were encouraged to take "early retirement" and were replaced by relatively unimpressive but far less costly new teachers.
What do you mean by "community support eroded"? Are you primarily talking about support for higher tax levies and votes for referenda?
What do you mean by "community support eroded"? Are you primarily talking about support for higher tax levies and votes for referenda?
There was a distinct "backlash" against the high costs of running the schools. That was literally evident walking through the hallways -- the building had become "decrepit". That lead to some of the most talented students and some of what would have been "involved" families choosing to utilize parochial schools and/or moving to neighboring areas.
Fortunately this support was mostly restored through the hardwork of committed community memebers.
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Couple of different ways to look at this...
