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I've noticed . Now granted, it is just a small sample size..but I've seen teachers who live in good districts send their kids to private school as well. I value teachers and their opinions very much. For those of you that teach in public schools, could you share your thoughts on why you would find private schools to be more appealing if you do indeed? thanks!
I work with 30 teachers. Not one of us has sent our children to private school.
The only one of my friends who does send their child to private school does so because the public school is not a great one.
I've noticed . Now granted, it is just a small sample size..but I've seen teachers who live in good districts send their kids to private school as well. I value teachers and their opinions very much. For those of you that teach in public schools, could you share your thoughts on why you would find private schools to be more appealing if you do indeed? thanks!
I grew up in a house with two teachers. Two teachers who multiple teacher friends and their friends had kids who i was friends with. I never asked the question but it always puzzled me as to why some of my friends did not attend my public school with me. Now did all of them attend private schools? certainly not. In fact a few simply attended the public school next door to mine albeit in a different district. One of my best friends growing up, his dad was my junior high principal. However my friend went to a school that was more suburban than anything else while his father was the principal of the urban school that I attended. My high school principal sent his kids to the local catholic schools. I always wondered to myself "do they not trust the schools they govern over? who's fault is that?". Now in the case of my high school principal who sent his kids to catholic school I understood that he himself went to that same school and they were catholic so it made sense.
My point is and always was if you're the head of a school and you don't trust your own school that you govern to educate your own kid then what does that tell you about yourself as a professional and what would that signal to other parents? that you're a horrible principal? just saying.
I would only send my child to a private school if her public school was unacceptable. There are issues with private schools too.
I think paying for a private school is a waste of money if the public schools are good.
It's basically paying 100,000$-140,000+ for a basic private school with out all the bells and whistles for PK-12th. A top private school can cost double or triple that.
You could save that amount and help your child open their own business once they become adults. ( or a house)
Now if your public schools are terrible, it makes sense to go private.
Next door neighbor of mine went to local catholic schools k - 12. He and I were the same age, same grade, grew up together, kinda drifted apart in high school. First day of college I saw him on campus and was surprised (again hadn't really kept in touch that well in high school even though we lived 10 yards apart sad i know). It was only after that I began to think hmmmm.......they paid all that money over 13 years and my family paid essentially nothing for the both of us to go to the same university. Now they were a large catholic family (3 boys and 1 girl) and i'm sure received a "friends and family" discount to attend but still. my point always was they would have saved all that money to send him to the same place as I. Now i know the ends should not justify the means BUT i have a hard time looking past that in this particular case.
One of my best friends growing up, his dad was my junior high principal. However my friend went to a school that was more suburban than anything else while his father was the principal of the urban school that I attended. My high school principal sent his kids to the local catholic schools. I always wondered to myself "do they not trust the schools they govern over? who's fault is that?". Now in the case of my high school principal who sent his kids to catholic school I understood that he himself went to that same school and they were catholic so it made sense.
It can be hard on a kid if a parent teaches at their school; even harder if their parent is an administrator. It is possible that he wanted to avoid his kids hearing anything negative, or avoid any potential conflicts of interest.
I grew up in a house with two teachers. Two teachers who multiple teacher friends and their friends had kids who i was friends with. I never asked the question but it always puzzled me as to why some of my friends did not attend my public school with me. Now did all of them attend private schools? certainly not. In fact a few simply attended the public school next door to mine albeit in a different district. One of my best friends growing up, his dad was my junior high principal. However my friend went to a school that was more suburban than anything else while his father was the principal of the urban school that I attended. My high school principal sent his kids to the local catholic schools. I always wondered to myself "do they not trust the schools they govern over? who's fault is that?". Now in the case of my high school principal who sent his kids to catholic school I understood that he himself went to that same school and they were catholic so it made sense.
My point is and always was if you're the head of a school and you don't trust your own school that you govern to educate your own kid then what does that tell you about yourself as a professional and what would that signal to other parents? that you're a horrible principal? just saying.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pobre
It can be hard on a kid if a parent teaches at their school; even harder if their parent is an administrator. It is possible that he wanted to avoid his kids hearing anything negative, or avoid any potential conflicts of interest.
Or it could be as simple as those administrators lived in a different school district. Unless your school district requires employees to actually live in the district where they teach (which, I believe, is fairly rare) the administrators could just send their own children to the school in the district where they live. It doesn't mean that they did not feel that the school where they teach or are an administrator is less qualified.
The school where I last taught (before I retired) had teachers living in at least 15 different school districts. Over the past few years our various principals all lived in different school districts. It wasn't on purpose it just happened that they got jobs in a different suburb than where they lived.
Where I live right now I am within a 10 minute drive to at least 6 different school districts.
But if money wasn't an issue than you would do private school before public correct..assuming charter wasnt available to you?
Yes because the private schools I like can do two things that the public schools cannot. They can hold students accountable. The thing that is wrong with education today is that we can't hold students accountable. It's never the student's fault if they get a bad grade. It's the teacher's fault and kids know it. As a parent I don't buy this and my kids know it but I would prefer an environment that holds students accountable for learning than one that doesn't if I had a choice.
Being able to hold students accountable also allows private schools to raise the bar (most don't which is why I didn't choose to send my kids to a private school I can afford. Many lower cost private schools don't have the resources to teach classes like chemistry and physics to high standards.). If money were no object, my kids would have gone to one of the two premiere college prep private schools in this area because they hold students accountable for learning and set high standards. I'm not allowed to do either. There's always someone else to blame when students fail and if I raised the bar more kids would fail...which would be my fault for raising the bar.
I believe that kids rise to the standards you expect of them if you hold them to high standards and hold them accountable. We're not allowed to do either in the public schools. We're too busy teaching to the bottom of the class and trying to make education fun so Johnny will actually pay attention. Of course Johnny is growing up thinking everything should be entertaining and it's someone else's job to make him learn as opposed to his job to learn.
The only teachers I know that sent their children to private schools were ones that either:
- had a kid in dire need of structure and they thought Catholic schools was the way to go
- was offered a scholarship by an elite private school...this girls father died a few years prior and she wanted a
smaller setting
- were really not great teachers and had no faith in their own work
- had a kid they thought was hanging with the wrong crowd so chose private to get over them
- had a spoiled kid who got what they wanted
Please back up your claim that public school teachers are sending their children to private schools in huge numbers.
Assuming you are referring to the original poster;
Since the original poster stated "Now granted, it is just a small sample size...", your supposition of 'huge numbers' holds no merit, and thus no 'back up claim' is warranted. JMHO.
I am a public school teacher. Most of the other teachers at the high-performing suburban school where I teach send their kids to our school. I used to send my son there, but he is high-performing on the autism spectrum, and was completely failed by the public school and district in his 2nd and 3rd grade year. A school can be rated "exemplary" based on test scores and have a great reputation, yet still fail certain subsets of kids, and our school has always been poor at working with students with special needs, due to disinterest among much of the staff/administration, and lack of training. Toward the end of the year I pulled him out to be homeschooled by his father and grandmother for rest of the school year, with me providing the curriculum. He learned a lot more at home than at school.
My son will attend a private school next year, one that is open to accepting kids with academic challenges (it's about 1/3 gifted students, 1/3 average, 1/3 academically challenged) and has a great word-of-mouth reputation in town. It costs less than 10K a year, and although they said no scholarships were currently available, they offered me a substantial discount when I asked for financial aid.
People often say that public schools are more diverse than private ones. That is NOT always the case. The private school my son will attend has about 15% African-American students, whereas the public school I teach at (in an affluent, suburban neighborhood) has less than 1% African-American students. The same pattern goes for Hispanic, economically disadvantaged students, etc. Public schools in my state are neighborhood based, and most neighborhoods are de-facto segregated on the basis of economics and ethnicity.
The other great thing about private schools is that they don't have to teach to state standardized tests. I have seen enough of that to last a lifetime. Kids not reading even one novel all year in reading class, because they spent the whole year being coached via reading worksheets to pass a test; kids not being taught social studies at all at the elementary level because it isn't tested until late in middle school, the miseries of testing go on and on. The standardized testing mania is an assault on public schools, and I want my son shielded from that.
The school my son will attend is nominally religious, but doesn't teach religion in class and has students of all faiths (or no faith) happily attending. It's a progressive Christian denomination (same-sex marraige is fully accepted), and respects other beliefs. I do like that his teachers will be able to say "Merry Christmas" to him, and such, without being called out for promoting religion, as a teacher in a public school would be.
That being said, there is no one right school for everyone. Many, probably most students at my school are well served by our public school. The kids in the ghettos are not usually so well-served, because of their disadvantages, discipline issues at those schools, and the intense test-prep focus that pervades EVERYTHING at a low-performing public school in this state. That's why I'm in favor of school choice (not vouchers, but just of having all options open). Every family should make the decision based on what is right for their child.
I've noticed . Now granted, it is just a small sample size..but I've seen teachers who live in good districts send their kids to private school as well. I value teachers and their opinions very much. For those of you that teach in public schools, could you share your thoughts on why you would find private schools to be more appealing if you do indeed? thanks!
All the public school teachers that I know send their children to public schools, and all the charter school teachers that I know also send their children to public schools.
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