Why are public schools getting so bad?

Question

Specifically I'm wondering about NYC schools, since I don't know about other places.

When my dad was in school in Michigan in the 60s, they had a huge pool, and a school band, a school orchestra, a million sports, shop class, a great theater department, all this great stuff. It was a public school.

My mom's school in Long Island was great too. They had three choices of languages (Spanish, French and German), gym class every day and they did stuff like archery, they had a well-stocked lab, a great music department (in both my parents' schools you could just walk in to the band room and rent a French horn, and learn to play it and be in a group) and all kinds of great stuff.

The schools in my area definitely don't have any of that. Hell, if I were in the system my books would be ten years old, kids would be having sex in the hallways, no way in hell there's a band or orchestra, gym once a week, no foreign language or just Spanish...

Aren't we paying the same amount of taxes?

If we are, why aren't we getting the same results?

And if we're paying less, why?

And if we're paying more, why are people so incompetent?

Answer 1

several reasons
1. the public school system was designed in the 60s and hasn't had a major restructuring which is probably what it needs 40 years later
2. the population explosion in urban areas has created severe overcrowding in the inner city schools leading to resources being to thinly divided among studends
3. back then people just had a much better morals, you could leave ur house unlocked and not worry, if you left something somewhere people didn't mess with it, now kids break or steal everything they can from the public schools for no reaso thus when the school tries to give them something good, they ruin it, so the schools have run out of money to try anymore

Answer 2

I think a lot of it has to do with when your parent's were in school there was no population explosion. Schools would be built and improved over a 50 year or more period, now all the money is going to build new schools as fast as we can.... and to build them cheaply.