Just wrote a response on a Crossland Blog post about school gerrymandering. Dunno if it will get approved. What prompted it was this comment:

…we faced a similar middle school situation last year. We can see the middle school from our back yard – living close enough to it that RRISD says our neighborhood is walking distance. But they wanted to switch our neighborhood to a lower performing school. … As a result, we considered selling our home – the market range for our home was about $10k less than we paid for it back in 2002. We are not independently wealthy – we could not afford to send our kids to private school… So, would we flush $10k of equity down the toilet in order to get our kids into the best school track we could afford? HECK YES! And I would peel out in the moving truck with the window down, flipping the bird to my former neighbors while doing it!…

My Response:

Yeah, but your neighbors will have the last laugh when your kid can’t get into a state school because of the top 10% rule. The abandonment of our schools in pursuit of some mythical “excellent education” for our children only, would shock our grandparents and is anti-ethical to the American ideal. We’re paying for it in any case. Every kid that drops out of school and becomes an unproductive member of society is a hit to our paycheck. Ever think there might be a correlation between Texas’ #49th in Education ranking and #3 in property taxes ranking?

For me this attitude is like saying sure there are kids starving, but I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure my kid gets 42 bags of potato chips. It’s glutinous and it’s disgusting.

But hey, It’s your kids “superior” education or spending a large portion of your paycheck on welfare, prisons, and the military. Your choice.