If you have your images turned off, you may be missing several important links. Parents want their children to go to school in a place where they will be safe, and where the environment is focused on teaching and learning. Many such schools exist in our big cities. But not enough.
Size alone is one problem.
Both schools and classes tend to be bigger in urban areas than in nonurban areas, even though the needs of the children are often greater. High school students in the 74 big-city districts examined by Quality Counts are 25 percent more likely than the average U.S. teenager to attend a school with more than 900 students. On average, urban students attend bigger schools than nonurban students. Many of these giant schools resemble vast warehouses where students float anonymously through what passes for an education. Where they can skip school and no one will notice.