I'm a senior at a public high school thats in the top 50 in the nation, schools pretty nice and doesn't seem much like a public school, every parent (including mine) who lived in the area moved over here just so their kid could be at this school and it's pretty ****ing competitive. My academic average (5.0 scale) is a 4.2 and I'm not even in the top half of my class. One of my friends with a lower academic average than me at another school near here is in the top 15 percent of his class, and I'm not even top 50 percent. But it's all good, from what I've heard from my friends in college who went here, the first year of college is a joke compared to right now.
Not all public schools are bad, but it's a ****ing shame how little attention is being payed to most public schools. Hopefully things change under whoever the US's next president is.