Natasha,<br /><br />Super insightful. I think you&#39;re right. &quot;Trust&quot; is the right word. My wife and I have this conversation quite a bit and I have to remind myself that my propensity to trust is far different from hers. This isn&#39;t saying anything good about me or bad about her. We&#39;re just different. As a mother, she&#39;s more likely to want to protect our children from any danger and to give them the absolute best (or at least the best we can). As a father (especially of boys), I&#39;m more okay with them experiencing adversity. I look back and think of my negative experiences and the way that they shaped me and I&#39;m grateful for them. <br /><br />As a restaurant owner, I&#39;ve had to learn to &quot;trust&quot; certain things as well. I&#39;m just way more used to it than she is. I entrust the largest investment of my life to a team of people in their early twenties every day. When I&#39;m not here, I&#39;m leaving my &quot;child&quot; in the hands of others and trusting that it will be okay. I could not function if I could not &quot;entrust&quot; it to others. I&#39;d be a basket case.<br /><br />Mostly, I will trust my kids. I will trust that because they&#39;ve been raised in my home, they will tend to make the types of decisions that people of our values and character make and that when they don&#39;t, the structure and integrity of our family will help us to learn from those mistakes and move forward. I &quot;trust&quot; us. I was raised in a wonderful family and went to Nathan Hale. My parents won. Trust won. I&#39;m better for it.<br /><br />When I think about the men that private schools will shape versus the men that public schools will shape, I&#39;m choosing Tulsa Public Schools. (I totally understand those who don&#39;t, however. It&#39;s a bold choice). I want my sons to be men who have shared a classroom with people of a different race, socioeconomic background, and family structure than theirs. I want my sons to be men who have been educated socially because I think it&#39;s far more valuable than an academic education. I want them to be honest, open-minded, empathetic, and understanding that our world is made more beautiful by the very different people with whom we share it. I think the way we live our personal lives has moral implication that we don&#39;t often consider. Is suburban sprawl a moral issue? Is &quot;white-flight&quot; a moral issue? Is it immoral to seek out people like us and to locate ourselves in proximity to them? It is moral to promote one set of values about selflessness and sacrifice and then move my family to place where I will not have to do either as it pertains to their education? For me, these issues ping in my mind. These are my issues. I&#39;m not saying they should be all of our issues.<br /><br />As for the actual academic education part. I blame most of the &quot;test score&quot; differences on the parenting and family structure of students in our lower performing schools. It&#39;s not nearly as much about the teachers, the books, the computers, the facilities, or the resources. Union teachers went to the same colleges as TPS teachers. They have the same heart for their students. They use the same books. The primary difference between Union and TPS is the parent involvement. My kids will be raised to study and learn and to appreciate knowledge and education. They will do their homework. They will be expected to pay attention to their teachers and they will be expected to do as well as they can on their tests. They will receive a fine academic education. . . and I will trust them to learn some valuable lessons about their city, country, and world no matter where they attend school.