Bloomington Schools

From Bloomington Reddit:

I didn't go to Harmony, but I grew up with 3 friends who did. For context I am in first year of grad school, so this was all 2009-2016.

The first, swapped to my sixth grade class after going to Harmony for their entire life. They did not know anything about fractions nor did they know about multiplication and division. They were constantly having to be removed from the rest of the class or separated from us in order to teach them. Apparently they went to the same schools as me from then on out, however, I literally never saw them and never had any classes with them. They have since joined the Army.

The second friend went to Harmony from 3rd grade to 7th. Then in 8th grade switched to public schools. Similar situation in being WAY behind on many subjects, especially math. Humanities stuff they were okay on. They weren't as bad as my previously mentioned friend. Switched back to Harmony for highschool. This is the only one of the three who has graduate college, but they struggled through all of the properly academic portions (the GenEds, writing papers, and so on) but did well in the hands-on, artistic stuff (they majored in studio art). Due to not doing well in their GenEds and some other classes, they had to retake a few, resulting in them having to take an extra year to graduate.

Third friend was making switch from Harmony to public schools in 7th grade (start of middle school here). They hated every second of it and had horrible anxiety attacks almost every day because of the "rigid" structure of public schooling. Really, they just had never experienced a normal school system. They were failing nearly every single class. They didn't even make it a full year before switching back to Harmony. They had a child in 2019 (a few years out of high school) and are taking part time classes at the community college.

From my understanding from how these friends described things, Harmony had very little structure compared to public school. The kids were also had much more easy access to drugs and alcohol. They were also much more sexually active. Of course these things existed in public school as well, however the proportion of students who engaged is much higher in Harmony compared to public schools. Of course, I heard all of this second hand, so it might not be true.

In public school (I went Childs, Jackson Creek, South), I knew many kids with ADHD or other things which necessitated having IEPs (Individual education plans). I know many of them look back fondly on things, especially many of the teachers and general way they were educated. Many of the kids sucked, but that's just school in general and unavoidable.

edit: I forgot to mention something important: all four of us were raised by at least mostly by single, super liberal moms and of around the same socioeconomic class. So we all had very similar starting positions, with the major difference being education.