Interesting topic. My wife and I both went to public schools and are both reasonably successful. I went to private for one year and hated it, went back to public. The private school I went to was relatively small, a lot of the kids there had been in the same building with the same kids since kindergarten. For me, it felt really strange. Didn't like anything about it. Because of that experience and both of us doing well coming out of public school, we intend to send our kids to public as well. We both also had parents highly engaged in our education, and are already engaged heavily in our kids at home. The desire to have them in public has impacted a lot of decisions we've made. We currently live in one of the best school districts in the state. If we didn't, we would move. We have thought over the past year about moving, and looked at several areas we would like to live but will not consider bc of the poor public schools. I'll also say, we would like to start our kids in public and work with them to try to make it work, but if there's a safety or academic progress concern that we can't address, I won't hesitate to send them to private. My job is to make sure they get a good education and that they're safe and developing socially at the same time. If those things are not all happening in public, we'll deal with it however is necessary. On the topic of the article, our thoughts on relocation highlight a lot of the problems with fixing public school systems. Where we live now is fairly affluent. High property taxes = good funding for schools = schools that are rated highly = desirable areas to live with high house values and high property taxes. The cycle feeds itself. On the other hand, if we moved to some of the areas we like that have poorly rated schools, we would send our kids to private, and not engage in trying to improve the public schools. I'm willing to bet that's how nearly all people with the means treat this situation, and as a result, the public schools don't improve. I have no idea how you fix that. You're not going to convince parents with means to send their kids to poor performing schools. That is also indefensible. Last thought on this, there is a very large, popular, and expensive private school in our city with the highly rated public school system. That part I do not understand at all. Property taxes are really high here mostly to fund the public schools. If you live here, you're paying those either way. Why live here and pay those taxes for the great public schools, but still send your kids to an expensive private? If we decide to go the private route at some point, there are a ton of areas where we'd be excited to live that would suddenly be an option. I don't understand moving to an area that's expensive largely due to the school system and then but taking advantage of not needing private school. But, it's not my $.