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[quote=Anonymous]My north suburban Chicago high school (Lake County) has an average ACT of 28.  There is nothing like it in Fairfax (TJ is a magnet which draws from all over the County). My school is part of a small district - as is the case in Illinois save for Chicago and Elgin and Aurora. There is virtually no diversity - and the fact that Michael Jordan’s kids attended there is of no relevance as far as diversity. The school was built in 1959 by my mother’s uncle and it has been upgraded and is nice.  The school has shrunk by over a 1000 students since I graduated in the late 70’s. Sports were very good then - my brother and I were state champions with the advantage of attending a high school in terms of college prep equal to expensive private schools.  My brother and I were poor and lived in the only duplex in town due to my aunt’s largesse towards my single mother. So the school succeeded on the ultimate benchmark of making for excellence for a poor but ambitious student. Not the best student - but top 10 out of 750 and it prepared me well for two top ten universities.

There is a catch to all of this. Chicago has long been one of the most segregated cities in the country and the lack of diversity is no accident. The huge public pool complex and country club type park was built to defeat a low income housing proposal in the 60’s. The lawsuit was famous for its time and the defendant/village prevailed and racism was all over the case. Out of protest I never went to that pool or park.
And this scenario could never exist in Fairfax - a good thing.

Property taxes are sky high, too, although the village doesn’t face the massive and unpayable pension debts of the majority of other Illinois cities. The taxes are paid willingly though because of the quality of the schools. Not the case with most of the rest of the State and FCPS grades out well in comparison. The State skews far left and has the worst finances in the country (factual, and not an opinion). Academic performance throughout the state is abysmal with large chunks either not proficient or barely proficient. Districts like mine will at some point be required to suspend local control over the schools as the money will all go to Springfield and be redistributed on the basis of diversity and equity. When that happens the upper middle class exodus will be astounding. There are not many private schools in the well off areas because they can’t compete with the local high performing districts. People will simply leave when the school money goes away (my school has 400 applicants for every teaching job and you can guess at the type of applicants - high GPA types from Illinois, Northwestern and Wisconsin). Starting salaries are near 85k - again it can’t continue.

People have commented that I missed out on diversity and understand the comment. I had plenty of diversity though as I trained in sports with the minority kids in Waukegan (and even traveling to Chicago Heights on the far South Side). But that experience was not common at my school and indeed there was an impression by my competitors that the school had somewhat soft kids who were good students. That reputation is deeper today.  I didn’t care as I liked my classmates and they didn’t care whether I was poor.

I thought FCPS did a good job with my kids - I am no helicopter parent and mostly left my kids alone and just looked out for their happiness. They went to better schools than I did and with all the moaning about FCPS they frankly did a good job. [/quote]

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