Loh obviously hasn't heard much about private schools. They constantly ding parents for money, volunteering, etc. on top of the checks they write. Many of these schools are for well-off screw-ups and some use ludicrous approaches to teaching (e.g., bad versions of progressive education).

Many mediocre (or worse) public schools disntinguish themselves by being predominantly white. The schools I attended in the 60s and 70s were like this--even the college prep track was very uneven through junior high and high school with a mix of burned out teachers waiting for retirement and poorly mentored newbies. If my junior high or high school had had a sudden increase in the number of kids who were African-American, parents might suddenly have noticed what a crappy system they had. The response, of course, would have been white flight and defeat of property tax levies which would have made a crappy system worse.

Many "high performance" suburban public school districts basically teach kids to do well on standardized tests. This goes back to at least the 40s, when many districts used the NY Regents tests as a proxy for achievement. My college roommate could barely write a sentence, but graduated with decent grades from one of these places, which was in a well-off Republican suburb.

There's much that needs more exploration with private and public schools.

It makes me sad that there is an underlying assumption that people use public schools only because they can't afford private ones. We chose public schools for our children because we believe that they learn more there about the world, other people, and why it is important to be engaged citizens who care for our whole society. Academically, the schools have done a fine job (our children have attended magnets, charters, and our local neighborhood school in Los Angeles and Baltimore). Much of what children learn is from their parents. Our children read because we read. They know about politics, history, culture, and the environment because we talk with them, listen to NPR, subscribe to the newspaper, visit museums, go hiking, travel to new parts of the country, etc. I taught at one of the "best' private schools in the country for 10 years, and left in part because I knew I would NEVER want to send my children there. I also felt terrible for perpetuating the allure of private school. People are often shocked that we neither fled to the suburbs nor went the private route. I never feel that we have sacrificed anything.

All over the country, we have dopuses running our public schools... Not the Superintendents or the school boards, so much, necessarily, but the Principals and the Assistant Principals and so on.

The teachers, overall, get a grade of about C+.

Big problem is when fancy folks get the idea that public schools are past the pale, and write snarky articles expecting those of us who went to public schools, those of us who send our kids to public schools to sympathize with their faux elitest silly preconceptions.

In Detroit, the public scholls stink, but most other places in the USA, they are okay. Send your kids to public schools, and supplement their education with your own input.

I was very interested in this interview as a mom of two future Chicago public school students. I can definitely relate to the whole magnet school issue. People in my neighborhood worry about "feeder preschools." It's just ridiculous. I live next door to what is considered one of the best magnet schools in the entire city. However, I don't even know if I'll apply to it. I think I'd rather walk (or drive, unfortunately in the cold) to the so-called "neighborhood" school where there is no competition to get in (other than the steep cost of real estate in the district). Why? Because it has an incredible sense of community. It has a full-time music teacher and a full-time art teacher. They teach French (I'd prefer Spanish) from kindergarten through 8th grade.

And, you can be sure it could never have all this without the heavy involvement of parents. They contribute financially and with blood, sweat, and tears.

The only issue I really have with the school (other than the irony that I'll be living next door to another school) is that it is overcrowded.

However, I see every day that schools are turning around through the huge contributions of caring parents and teachers.

I hope we don't give up on our public schools.

(By the way, I also live equally close to many of the most elite and expensive private schools in the city. And even if I could afford them, I would never send my children there. One proudly boasts that it has students from 64 area codes. I love that my children will see their friends daily in the neighborhood.)

I'm a teacher in a middle school with 56% of students on free/reduced lunch, despite the campus being surrounded by $500K subdivisions. Nearly all those parents send their children to private schools or take advantage of the "choice" programs to bus their children to the fancier (white, upper middle class) public schools in other parts of the county because we're designated a "Low Performing" school thanks to our diverse population. We have 15 separate sub-groups, and each of them (including ESOL immigrants who've only been here for a year and a day) has to make significant improvement or else we won't meet AYP. This means we're perceived as a "failing" school, even though I see incredible successes every day, and our overall test scores are quite high. But all this is a rant better suited to a Salon article on NCLB.

I first heard of Tsing Loh's book via a capsule review in another publication, which simply said that she was terrified by public schools without having been in them. I clicked on this interview expecting to be upset by the same judgments, so I'm very glad to see that this isn't the case at all. She's right that public schools are exactly what we make of them, and that they can be such an enriching experience if we get behind the misperceptions. Unfortunately, too few parents are willing to take that chance.