Rhurbarb, I know that and it sucks. But you can't seriously expect me to choose to send my son to at school where a kid was shot and killed over a basketball game a recess over a place where that's a lot less likely to happen. You obviously don't want to send your kids there (if it's your school you're talking about). Would you still do it if you could afford something different?
I guess if all schools were state, I would move somewhere with decent schools. We didn't (in Chicago), simply because we love the city and think it's horrible people move out and then have to drive back in for work, etc. (Don't get me started on suburban sprawl.. ) I think we, along with many of our neighbours, did a good job in the neighbourhood dealing with gangs isn't really fun, y'know, although we didn't have a rough time of it (just the usual: graffiti, a break in, more graffiti, kids getting shot it was mostly kids, but usually gang related).
Now the things I did for the CPS system include: voting for people concerned about schools, running a program in a school across the parking lots in the Robert Taylor homes (the projects -- most people won't even drive into the neighbourhood), helping with another project involving getting a set of local, v poor schools connected to the internet with T1 connections and supporting that with the computers themselves and additional training and plus, just living where I did, being out on the streets, calling the police for what seemed like every goddamned night for a while when things got out of hand, thereby helping the gang problem which also affected the local school. So now that you're all impressed with the things I did (not impressed, I'm sure); I have to admit that you're right, the one thing I didn't do was put my son in danger or deny him an education (and believe me, he would have been denied one). He's my son and it boils down to the fact that I love him a lot more than I love yours. Not that I don't wish this were an ideal world and all kids got the same education. And, of course, it's not that I want anything less that the best (and certainly no harm, I hope you didn't infer that from my message) for your child. Just, for me, my sons come first.
I think it's invalid to say that the only way to improve schools is for us middle class (whatever that means-- still haven't gotten the whole class thing yet) parents to send our kids to terrible schools. I think what it takes is people caring about the schools and caring enough to do something (anything!) about them, even if it's just buying candy from the kid coming around looking for money for band uniforms or donating a bunch of books to the local school's library. I think that if everyone did that, the schools would be a little better off, but more importantly, people would feel connected to the local schools. Even if their kids didn't go there.
Anyway, you're right. It's not fair. I didn't say it was. I said that you have an unreasonable expectation for people.