I went to public school in a school that eventually was taken over by our state (in Alabama) transfered to another magnet school, then moved to mississippi and whent to one of the highest rated schools in the country at the time (they had a huge banner of their national testing standard).
All the schools had metal detectors, were fenced in, had armed police men on site and functioned as mini prisons. Windows didn't open, cameras outside of bathorooms and in the hallways and in every classroom. Could you get by? Yes I did, got a 3/4 scholarship to Univ. of Michigan but a full ride and stipend to Ala ST, graduated and got a full ride to grad school. Doesn't change the fact that I could see what school was becoming.
I congratulate you for excelling, but if you are intelligent as you claim you should be able to see what is going on in the public education system, even in "good" majority school systems, let alone the minority dominated systems. These schools care more about teaching kids to respect authority than teaching them how to think, hell they go out of their way to teach them incorrectly, with regards to math.