Greenwich Schools and the "brain drain"

In an unintentionally funny piece in the Sunday Greenwich Time, the "news" is announced that a large percentage of students in Greenwich go to private schools. Supposedly, because of these students who the Time alarmingly calls a "brain drain", the performance of the Greenwich school district on standardized tests is lower than it should be. I wonder what is next? will the Time write a piece on how the rotation of the Earth causes dark periods called the "light drain"?

I have lived in Greenwich for almost 30 years. during that entire time, a big chunk of all the kids went to private schools. There is nothing new here. Indeed, when I moved to Greenwich in the early 1980's, one of the main reasons that my wife and I chose the town was because of the high quality of the public schools. Of course, for the next 17 years, I had children in the private schools. My daughters went to Putnam Indian Field school, Whitby School and Greenwich country Day School (although that was for summer day camp). Only when they got to high school did they both go to Greenwich High School. In all that time, however, the same schools served roughly the same number of students with one notable exception: the Stanwich School was established and picked up a student population which came in part from Greenwich. in other words, the number of students in the private schools in town has not changed much over the last 30 years. Oh, there have been ups and downs with the numbers of total students, and there have bigger and smaller percentages of kids from outside Greenwich at the local private schools. For the most part, however, the enrollment has been relatively stable. That is why I find the article in the Time about a "brain drain" so funny. They write about the private school attendance as if it were big news. It's not! And, to the extent that there are problems in the Greenwich schools (which I do not believe), the fault lies with those schools and not with the 'brain drain".

Why is it that when a government unit does not do as well as it should, liberal newspapers like the Greenwich Time look for purported causes outside the institution itself? Why can't they gring themselves to admit that governments have many failures. Is the belief system that all good comes from the government so strong that they cannot perceive the truth? It would do the school system and the town a lot more good if the time would focus its energies on actual problems instead of manufacturing excuses out of thin (very thin) air.