<p>I think that varies greatly. In small schools, everyone knows everyone, they’re gonna know. Even if you don’t want them to, some teacher will comment “top grade” when they hand back your paper and yeah…In bigger schools, I have heard of others, often minorities, pretending to get crappy grades when possible. What’s definitely the case is it’s totally acceptable to brag about hating and sucking at math in this country.</p>
<p>I was reading the “elite public high schools” thread and had to resist the urge to go “There’s no such place.” </p>
<p>So the obvious question would be why are parents sending their kids to public schools still then? All too often I see parents blame everyone but themselves. I was baffled too when my own mom agreed with this, when I complained that school had been worse (traumatic) than a complete waste of time since at least 4th grade. She replied that it had been that way even back when she went to public school. I’m like OK…so why did you send us to one? </p>
<p>We all know about ghetto places like Detroit with the 50:1 ratio, and I was not at all surprised to find a postcard asking for <em>college freshmen</em> with no training at all to come and teach the kids to read for $9/hr. DPS should just throw in the towel right now. </p>
<p>What makes K-12 so dire though, it doesn’t much matter if from urban, rural, suburb, upstate NY etc. It’s all pervasively bad and no, I’m not excluding private schools from that. I think it’s truly broken and blame lies everywhere for that.</p>