My wife and I are both unlucky and lucky. We now live in an area where there are no non-religious private schools, but the particular public school we send our kids to is very good.

Yes, it's the kids. Sadly, family income appears to be a pretty good indicator of how kids will behave and how well they will do in school. The local elementary school is 100% in the middle of a large middle-class area, so there's no problems with shortages of school supplies, no obvious substance abuse issues, no nutritional problems, no lack of parenting because both parents are always working or exhausted just trying to make ends meet. You'd love to believe kids can always thrive in a good school, but it's just not true.

We are now concerned about what's going to happen when our kids hit the high school level and everyone's mixed together in a much larger environment. Our kids are about as tough as a newborn kitten, they're going to get eaten alive by rougher kids.