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So, I am located in a top-rated public school system of Indiana. However, the state has changed how education is funded in recent years and thus expenditures in my district recently had to be cut back for fiscal reasons.
We moved to our town fully anticipating to use the public school system K-12. My oldest daughter is just finishing up Kindergarten. I work but also have taken every opportunity to volunteer in the classroom knowing that teachers aids were recently cut. I wanted to help in whatever way I could. The PTO in my school works hard to raise money but that money cannot be spent on educators or aides. Primarily the PTO funds playground equipment or classroom equipment.
Meanwhile, my younger son is enrolled in an AMS Montessori preschool which offers both lower- and upper-elementary. The school is actually relatively affordable (as far as private schools go). However, the approach to learning is vastly different to the public district. After experiencing both environments first hand I have decided that for this age group I prefer the private Montessori environment. So, my daughter and son will both attend Montessori next year.
When it comes to these types of decisions, each situation is unique. It depends on the state. It depends on the public school district. It depends on the private school options. It also depends upon the child. You have to get as much information as you can about all of the above to make the best decision.
It will be interesting to see how my personal decision plays out over the next several years. I suppose the nice thing is that if private does not work out, there is a top-rated public to fall back on. At the end of the day we all just want to offer the best environment we can for our children.
This is the way that I’m leaning. Both of my kids are very bright and inquisitive at 2 and 4, and have both been complaining that they don’t like their current pre-k, and that they don’t learn anything. They both begged to switch schools. Where we currently live, the public schools are terrible, so everyone does private or charter. We applied for the charter lottery and didn’t get in, and a friend goes to a local Montessori that goes up to 3rd grade and invited me to check it out.
I went and toured, and brought the girls there, and they loved it. I have to switch the youngest because she will only be 3 this summer and is too young for any public school option anyway, and when my oldest didn’t get into the charter, I decided to keep them both at the same school. The Montessori teaching philosophy/style feels like a perfect fit at their ages, and I did like the classical education model of the charter school for ages 7/8 and above. If we move in a few months, the decision will be whether to just go to the public schools because they are highly rated, or try out a Montessori (or other private school) in the new city.
I love how with Montessori, if a child is advanced or interested in one area, all of the resources are in one classroom (or in the older classroom across the hall), and they can be challenged on their own without having to worry about the teacher teaching to the lowest denominator. My oldest is reading chapter books, and working on basic addition and subtracting (her interest, not my pushing at all), and half of the kids in her class still don’t know their letters or numbers. I always did well academically, and remember growing up feeling bored and unmotivated in many of my classes, even at a “top public school”.
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Originally Posted by jvr789
So, I am located in a top-rated public school system of Indiana. However, the state has changed how education is funded in recent years and thus expenditures in my district recently had to be cut back for fiscal reasons.
We moved to our town fully anticipating to use the public school system K-12. My oldest daughter is just finishing up Kindergarten. I work but also have taken every opportunity to volunteer in the classroom knowing that teachers aids were recently cut. I wanted to help in whatever way I could. The PTO in my school works hard to raise money but that money cannot be spent on educators or aides. Primarily the PTO funds playground equipment or classroom equipment.
Meanwhile, my younger son is enrolled in an AMS Montessori preschool which offers both lower- and upper-elementary. The school is actually relatively affordable (as far as private schools go). However, the approach to learning is vastly different to the public district. After experiencing both environments first hand I have decided that for this age group I prefer the private Montessori environment. So, my daughter and son will both attend Montessori next year.
When it comes to these types of decisions, each situation is unique. It depends on the state. It depends on the public school district. It depends on the private school options. It also depends upon the child. You have to get as much information as you can about all of the above to make the best decision.
It will be interesting to see how my personal decision plays out over the next several years. I suppose the nice thing is that if private does not work out, there is a top-rated public to fall back on. At the end of the day we all just want to offer the best environment we can for our children.
This! 100 times this. I fully expect our kid to go on to a great college and have a successful career, but that’s not the main reason we went her to private. It was about putting her in an environment where she enjoys going to school every day, being able to articulate like an adult, where there is a deliberate effort to foster community and bonds between students and faculty and to produce confident, capable graduates who have a deep understanding of reading and writing and are leaders in their community and who think critically about the world around them.
I remember going to the open house for my daughter’s private high school and the admissions director saying something along the lines of “if the only reason you want to send your kid here is to get them into a prestigious college, reconsider.”
That’s just not what it’s about.
Yes! I went to kindergarten in 1985, graduated high school in 1998, so I’m in the same age range as Katarina’s kids, and I went to one of the top school districts on Long Island (one of the top 100 high schools out of over 30,000 in the country based on Newsweek list). I had always felt that they were teaching to the test even back then, and that many students just memorized facts for a test, did very well, and then forgot it by the end of the year or the next year. I would rather have gotten a B+ and actually learned the information than to get an A but not retain much of it. I never felt that critical thinking was nearly as important as GPA, and although it was not a question of if you are going to college, but where (I think there was only one or two kids in my high school that DIDN’T go to college), that doesn’t necessarily mean that even those that graduate from great colleges will be able to think critically, or to be well-rounded and savvy.
As an adult, I see far too many, even with great educations and successful careers make poor choices, get themselves into debt, or fall for false dichotomies and manipulation. I don’t want my children to just have a good education, but also critical thinking skills, an ability to work well with others and find compromises, to always respect others no matter how much they disagree, to seek first to understand then to be understood, and to make wise choices in life.
Obviously a lot of that is a parents’ job and comes down to parental involvement and values, but I would like for schools to be able to reinforce those values and to teach children how to think critically, not just teach them what to memorize and regurgitate.
I have had my kids in a top rated elementary where the PTO regularly raised enough to hire extra paras and the parents were able to volunteer so regularly that it was almost as if the school had extra staff. I would say that our experience with this school was very good to excellent in the early years, especially in kindergarten but became less great as they moved into the older grades and the focus on standardized testing became more and more of a priority.
I’ve also had my kids in a more average rated public school with a lot less money and less parental involvement. The difference was night and day. I don’t have any fond memories of this school experience.
I’ve never experienced private school but I’d imagine that there could be quite a big difference. Private Schools have a lot more freedom and autonomy to choose their own curriculum and focus. I’d imagine there are huge differences between private schools because there are so many different types. I’m sure some are amazing while others are mediocre.
If I had a child who was about to enter Kindergarten I would focus less on private vs public and instead look at the individual schools, both private and public and then figure out which one was the best fit overall. There are great public schools and there are great private schools which makes it impossible to say with confidence that private is always better then public or vice versa.
Last edited by MissTerri; 04-14-2018 at 09:07 AM..
2) When people discuss why they send their kids to private schools, particularly these "independent" high academic private schools, the reason given is usually "so they can get into a good college".
That's when parents would be wrong. Just because a kid graduates from a private school (parochial or independent - and I was told on this board about a year ago to make sure I differentiate between the two b/c parochial & independent privates are different animals) doesn't mean they will get in to a "good college".
Then the definition of "good college" starts another discussion.
This is always a touchy subject. Parents feel the need to defend the choices they make/made for their kids.
This is always a touchy subject. Parents feel the need to defend the choices they make/made for their kids.
I can be one of those touchy people who feels the need to defend the choices I've made for my son. Yet I have no compunctions about saying I absolutely believe he would have gotten a better education and a better life experience in a private school.
It just wasn't financially feasible for me, and my tradeoff was making sure I lived in a location where I could get as good a public school education as possible for him while weighing other important factors like my budget and my job location.
I'm comfortable with the choices I made but not blind to the fact that I compromised to some extent on all of the variables to come up with the best overall situation to meet our needs.
That's when parents would be wrong. Just because a kid graduates from a private school (parochial or independent - and I was told on this board about a year ago to make sure I differentiate between the two b/c parochial & independent privates are different animals) doesn't mean they will get in to a "good college".
Then the definition of "good college" starts another discussion.
This is always a touchy subject. Parents feel the need to defend the choices they make/made for their kids.
Right, kids from public schools get into good colleges all the time. However, perhaps the idea is that there are some connections that private schools can have to better universities that tip the scales a bit. College Prep private schools will have a strong dedicated college counseling office with a commitment to finding kids the right university. That may help a bit...but no private school is going to turn a kid who isn't Ivy League material into an Ivy League student. I want my children to be well prepared for college, and my kids are above average but I'm not kidding myself that they are future Harvard students. My husband and I went to really great non Ivy universities but even those are more difficult to get into now than they were 25 years ago. Things have changed. We just want the best for our kids and we want to get the best out of them. The environment in the private school gets more from them than the bigger public school would. That's just our kids (the public school has the same top classes, no doubt those kids are well prepared when that environment fits them).
Also there are many excellent religious private schools as well. Just because a school is religious does not mean it's lower quality. I mean, look through a list of best private schools in the country and a decent number of them have a religious aspect (Episcopalian, Catholic, General Christian...)
What bugs me about the comments from the private school advocates is the condescension, which, BTW is defined thusly: "an attitude of patronizing superiority; disdain."
e.g., "kids from public schools get into good colleges all the time"; "I'm fine with anyone who chooses their local public school and totally respect that choice and the right to make it"; "their (public school) teachers understandably just do not have time for that (individual attention)" or even "Just because a school is religious does not mean it's lower quality"; and so on.
The undercurrent in these statements is: "kids from public schools don't get into the good colleges as often" (contradicting the notion that getting one's kids into a good college is not a prime motivation for choosing private schools); "I think people who choose public schools are doing their kids a disservice"; "public school teachers are incompetent"; "religious schools are not as good as 'independent' private schools".
BTW, I think a lot of these "religious" schools are only historically so, just as some religious colleges, e.g. Harvard, are no longer religious in the usual sense.
And to the person who claimed, anecdotally second-hand, that "private school kids are hands down better than those coming out of the top public high schools in the country", I have an anecdote for you. My husband went to a high school that is not in the top 100 districts from that niche link. In fact, even though it is the largest district in Nebraska it is ranked #57 for Nebraska! He got into Caltech, which again, according to niche (to be consistent) is the fifth hardest college in the country to get into. Most of his friends there also went to public K-12 school.
Right, kids from public schools get into good colleges all the time. However, perhaps the idea is that there are some connections that private schools can have to better universities that tip the scales a bit. College Prep private schools will have a strong dedicated college counseling office with a commitment to finding kids the right university. That may help a bit...but no private school is going to turn a kid who isn't Ivy League material into an Ivy League student. I want my children to be well prepared for college, and my kids are above average but I'm not kidding myself that they are future Harvard students. My husband and I went to really great non Ivy universities but even those are more difficult to get into now than they were 25 years ago. Things have changed. We just want the best for our kids and we want to get the best out of them. The environment in the private school gets more from them than the bigger public school would. That's just our kids (the public school has the same top classes, no doubt those kids are well prepared when that environment fits them).
I understand where you are coming from & that's why my parents sent their children to a private & why my husband and I send our children to a private.
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Also there are many excellent religious private schools as well. Just because a school is religious does not mean it's lower quality. I mean, look through a list of best private schools in the country and a decent number of them have a religious aspect (Episcopalian, Catholic, General Christian...)
All I meant by that was to explain why I use the term "independent private".
There was no "shade" meant toward religious schools at all. My older two started out at an excellent Catholic elementary school. If we weren't financially able to send them to the private school we have, they'd be at a parochial HS.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 04-15-2018 at 08:54 PM..
Reason: Fixed quote
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