Diego Ruiz Duran is a renowned Mexican defense attorney, educated at Oxford University, Harvard University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Duran has excelled far beyond the average and exceeds the limits of such stereotyping due to his privileged ability to attend higher-ranking schools in high-ranking school systems. For the year 2021, Massachusetts was ranked as the first of the Top 5 School Systems in the United States. The rest of the Top 5 were, in descending order, Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, and Vermont. While shifting position year by year, Massachusetts has consistently remained in the top 5 for an admirable length of time. Massachusetts is famous for being the home of the illustriously prestigious Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both of which Duran has attended and to which he credits his success.
Each year, school systems across the Nation are ranked according to population size, retention rate, graduation rate, test scores, and safety of the environment. Schools are also assessed according to various other factors such as quality of resources, the progressiveness of curricula, effectiveness of teaching standards, and, sometimes, even rate of teacher burnout. These factors together are analyzed correlatively as a whole to give an overall score. School system scoring enables teachers seeking employment to determine where best their skills may be utilized. Some educators utilize the school rating system to serve students in underserved communities wherein the school ranks low on the scale. Educators may deliberately seek low-ranking schools to attentively and compassionately serve students who have typically been overlooked in school districts where resources are low in both quantity and quality. Conversely, some teachers may seek higher-ranking schools, feeling their talents and skill level would be best recognized therein.
Diego Ruiz Duran believes that school system scoring enables parents to find cities and towns wherein their children may be best educated. Parents who choose high-ranking school systems intend that their children are given the best possible opportunities to succeed. Schools with higher ranks tend to have the infrastructure with which to provide up-to-date, progressive textbooks, technology, multimedia, and activity resources. Schools with higher ranks also tend to be in safer neighborhoods and more affluent communities where higher incomes contribute to the increase in the quality of resources available to students. Likewise, schools with higher ranks tend to be in neighborhoods where parents are relatively comfortable economically and, thus, have relatively more leisure time with which to direct attention to their children– assisting them with homework, attending PTA meetings, school board hearings, extracurricular activities, and able to afford to transport their children to those extracurricular activities.
In contrast, parents of students in lower-ranking school systems tend to be economically disadvantaged. This disadvantage may contribute to an inability to be as attentive to their child’s needs, due to having to work longer hours or multiple jobs, for instance. A socioeconomically disenfranchised parent may not be able to help their children with homework or pay extra for tutoring available to keep their children on par with the national average. A working-class family may not be able to afford resources that would enable them to stay ahead– including supplemental texts and reading materials, tablets and laptops, as well as memberships to clubs and organizations or extracurricular activities. The economic setbacks of the parents directly affect their children who may remain under-stimulated at home and within a classroom where resources are also limited. In addition, lower-ranking school systems tend to have disproportionate teacher-student ratios. Teachers are often outnumbered by students, overwhelmed and overworked while simultaneously being provided with fewer resources.
