This is sooo upsetting to me. People here complain?? I know that I was extraordinarily lucky in my last job, due to a combination of an outstanding superintendent, aggressive grant funding, and a staff who was absolutely dedicated to meeting the needs of a diverse population. One thing that I think is different is that school districts in MA are generally small. I used to think this was bad, because you could provide less services, but now I think that it helps in financially lean times. The community sometimes rallies and finds a way to fund things.
My parents moved to CA from AZ when my brother was in high school. I had already been teaching a few years. After 6 months, Prop 13 passed. It had a devastating effect on his education. We have the same thing here (Prop 2.5), but I wasn't here when the initial cuts took place. But, that's why there weren't a lot of teachers my age when I got here in 1990. They all had lost their jobs. Then, when I got hired, in a year that 9,000 teachers lost their jobs, the other teachers were so mean to me! It was unreal that adults could act like this. I doubt they wanted to do my job (LD/BD kids). I only stayed in that district 2 years.
It's true, that the educational quality of a system varies from school to school, even within districts. I think that's everywhere. Teaching middle school, I immediately could tell which elementary school each kid had come from. Some emphasized writing (I taught lang. arts) and other kids thought writing meant "cursive." Some kids absolutely did not know how to "think" and explain their ideas, which is what we emphasized. It was not that they weren't capable of it. They had never done anything but fill in the blanks on worksheets.