Our worst year yet, in the best-ranked school district

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I was in for a rude awakening. On the first day in the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD), it was 40 degrees, not warm and toasty. School drop-off was filled with dads wearing flip-flops and Google T-shirts, a far cry from the Birkin-toting moms in Shanghai and the PTA moms of Tokyo. I was excited to meet Charles’s teacher, but then tried not to panic when it became clear that she was very pregnant—last-trimester pregnant—and there wasn’t yet a plan in place for her replacement.

Later that week, I attended my first PTA meeting where it was “suggested” that I donate $3,000 to various school funds. Three thousand dollars?! I was even more concerned when I realized that one of the previous year’s line items included a $30,000 expenditure for ergodynamic chairs for the fifth grade.

I planned to overlook the exorbitant fund-raising for quirky chairs, since the quality of the education should be truly excellent. Right? The school district was the best ranked in California, the nation’s largest state by population, according to Niche.com. The district’s recognition gave me the confidence that my children would continue the excellent educational path they were on.

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At the first middle school parent education meeting, I found out that seventh-grade students would read just three books in English class all year and that they were allowed to select any books they wanted for free reading. They could even pick the same book again and again all year long “because they’ll learn something different from it every time”!

In addition, the teacher would critique only three essays in the course of the year because, she explained, “each teacher has 125 students and there’s not enough time.” And this is at one of the best-funded public schools in the country. When I looked for the statistics later, I found that per-pupil spending for 2016–17 in our district was $19,386, several thousand more per pupil than the statewide average of $11,619 for other California unified school districts.

I was dumbfounded by the way teachers openly spoke about how little they expected of students—not because the students were incapable of more, but because it was too time-consuming for the teachers. At a twelve-person parent-teacher council meeting at the middle school, one tenured teacher nonchalantly explained his philosophy on grading: “Well, these kids come in so smart. If they already know everything I’m supposed to teach them when they walk in, then they get an A off the bat.” When I jumped in with disbelief, “Then increase your learning expectations,” the principal quickly moved us on to the next topic on the agenda to avoid the gloves coming off. But these kids would be bored, bored, bored. And why would they ever want to sit in class?

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Somewhere along the line in Palo Alto, the balance of power shifted from teachers and administrators to active families and PTAs. This manifested itself in all kinds of issues, which I experienced in our first year there. I thought that administration often acquiesced to the demands of the most vocal parents rather than prioritizing the requests that could contribute to the learning of all students.

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The schools weren’t doing an exemplary job educating the kids, but the parents of Silicon Valley were. One member of the school board called it the “broken feedback loop,” meaning teachers believe they are doing a great job because their students were performing so well. But Palo Alto parents refused to allow their kids to fall behind. Many of them were highly educated, ambitious, and wealthy. I attribute much of the 100 percent graduation rate to their efforts. They kept up the high enrollment in AP classes. This district’s success came down to one thing: the parents.

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