Right now I am in an average school district and wanting to move to a good, by buying a million dollar house. Before I pull the plug want to know if there are any resources on how the kids succeed.
Most people say schools don't play role its only parents. But I amn't convinced.
Wondering if someone can shed some light
I think there is a second related question as well: "Is it 'worth it' to move to a better school district?"
When we had children, we moved from a low performing district to a high performing district.
In the old district taxes were low and 1 in 30 children who graduated went on to a four year college or university. That was fine as we liked the low taxes and did not have kids.
In the new district, our school taxes are 3x what they were in the old district, but now the expectation is that every child is going to go onto a 4 year program in higher ed. The school has art, music classes and they are not teaching to the test. There is all around high expectations and active instructional intervention. Things that our the old system was not able to do.
For us, this was "worth it" in the sense that we have the resources and want to spend them in a way to try to maximize the opportunities for our kids. I have not seen that documentary you speak of, but I can imagine it talks about the rush/flood of parents like me to "good/great" school districts and how that drives up demand for housing and increases costs for the community.
One of my cousins was excited to go to a certain school because of its (American) football team but he did not get along with the coach. Your child might go to what other people think is a great school but not really benefit from it.
Many people think it is harmful that people move to choose schools
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap
What you might find curious from this book
https://www.amazon.com/Whiteshift-Populism-Immigration-Futur...
is that there is both black and white flight from neighborhoods from neighborhoods that have asians moving in. Many of those people perceive that asians are competitive in a way that detracts from the atmosphere of the school to other people. The society as a whole doesn't appear to give asians the same benefits of educational accomplishment that other people get from it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_ceiling
Myself I got a PhD but have mixed feelings about the academic enterprise, my son is not interested in college but instead he wants to get good at a blue collar job and I see nothing wrong with that.
Moving to another neighborhood however is of course onerous at best and prohibitively expensive at worst. Thank goodness for the internet as home schooling, especially during these times, has become a more viable option than ever before in history. History and English are the easy parts: Matt Damon's remark about library late charges is spot on. The hard part is coming up with math problems -- maybe you could dig out your childhood ones from India. If that isn't an option, then take consolation in the fact that being a big fish in a small pond (a reasonably smart kid in a bad district) makes it easier to stand out with college adcoms.