A couple days ago, I was driving in the car with my mother as we passed the old neighborhood we used to live in, in Northeast Philadelphia. As we drove we reminisced about my old elementary school that I attended for 3 years before ultimately moving to a more affluent suburb. She maintains that the education I got there was more impressive than the one I received at my newer school, and so on. We got to talking about the high school I would have attended had we remained there, and she brought something up that gave me some mixed emotions.
According to my mother, a short while after we left the neighborhood the local high school started to become less and less prestigious/rigorous and more people began to send their kids to other schools. When I inquired as to why this happened so suddenly, she told me that at some point, the county began bussing in students from lower-income districts so that they could enjoy the privileges offered at that school rather than being confined to a high school that can’t suit their potential. The largest obvious change that immediately occurred was an in increase in violence and a decrease in performance on tests. This gave the school a worse reputation and many of the local families were angry at the situation that they couldn’t avoid.
When I asked my mother her perspective and whether or not she truly believed that it was an unjustified imposition on the school she said:
“If I was the mother of a child who got to attend such a great high school, I would be so ecstatic for my child. But I can’t deny that had I been a mother of a local student, my heart would hurt to see such a good school go downhill so fast and with my child in it”.
This begged the question of whether or not it’s wrong to force student body cohesiveness at the expense of certain students, while it’s clearly a benefit to others who are in need…
Personally, I don’t know what the answer is to that kind of problem. In a perfect world, there would be enough money to fund both schools with enthusiastic and intelligent teachers so that everyone has the chance to succeed. But clearly that’s not where we live. Is it fair to force kids to sacrifice class time so that others have a chance to succeed? Or is it fair that some kids’ parents simply don’t have the financial means to live near such an impressive school? Both sides of the coin are poor circumstances and I don’t think I can make my mind up yet regarding what the perfect solution should be.