Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There are so many debates about the pros and cons of private and public schools.(talking secondary here) It's true if child comes from a very rich home environment they will probably to well either way. Again we don't have the answer which is better. Alot of us want a black or white answer to ease our minds. The way I figured would be good to measure is as follows..
How well would a student from a disadvantaged background do in a good private school vs. a good public school. Bad public schools should be left out of the equation because it's freakin' obvious they are not a good place to send your kids if you can help it.
anybody defending public schools is doing it for a political reason or for a financial reason.
anybody defending voucher system is doing it for the kids.
anybody defending public schools is doing it for a political reason or for a financial reason.
anybody defending voucher system is doing it for the kids.
You are giving an opinion based on? I'm all for opinions, but you can't back up what you're saying.
Personally, I am a huge advocate for public schools. However, in a lot of instances, I do think private schooling is a better in the early years because of the smaller class sizes and what not.
I do think the public schools give students more prep for living in the real world. I think with private schooling, students are in a bubble.
My dh went to a private school... Albuquerque schools are (and always have been) HORRIBLE. He did fine, though he's not what he would call "college material"... despite popular opinion, not everyone is.
His grandma paid his tuition after one of her visits to his family... they'd invited his teacher to dinner. His teacher explained to everyone at dinner that humans come from aliens and what we think of as death is really just when we return to our home planet.
There was a bunch of other stuff too... he'd did K-2 in Hawaii, 3-5th in Albuquerque (midyear), but was failing every subject that didn't come easily to him. The NEXT day, Grandma found Hope Christian High School and paid for him to attend 5th thru 12th grade.
How do you define "disadvantaged"? His family wasn't starving, but not on welfare either. Dh was able to dress to the dress code, but his pants weren't Dockers like everyone else's, and his shirt didn't have that little alligator on it (80s).
I think attending private school helped keep him from being exposed to a lot of carp and he may/may not have graduated from the public school system... he was falling through the cracks then, it certainly doesn't get better in the public system as the kids get older.
My boys go to parochial school. The reason we choose this way of education is that we would like our children to be focused on learning, that they are thought respect (they also get that at home), the schools are smaller ; max of 23 in class ; one son has 19, the other has 22. I also felt that the children that attend this school want to learn. While some children there are obnoxious ; some are spoilt, some are so fresh, most are good decent kids.
I felt that our children would fall thru the cracks. One gets resource reading daily, the other is doing great. I like the fact that they have uniforms ; gosh some of the kids going to public school are barely dressed.
The problem with vouchers is that they a) drag money out of the public system and b) are inadequate to cover the cost of the very best schools.
As for the question in the OP, I attended a wealthy independent school in an urban setting that had a considerable community scholar fund for disadvantaged students. My observation was that some of our community scholars (all local minorities) had discipline or academic problems and left, and others succeeded and stayed. But I always had a feeling that the successful community scholars were successful because, on some level, they "became" white -> bought in to the school's culture either at the expense of their roots or at the personal cost of leading a sort of double life.
From this I extrapolated a theory that private schools only help disadvantaged students succeed on the schools's terms, and that they can only help a few disadvantaged students at a time. A large scale voucher system attempting to put all the disadvantaged students into the private schools would fail because the schools would be overwhelmed.
Remember that by "private schools" I mean elitist, overwhelmingly white, old-money institutions. I have no experience with charter schools, parochial schools, community schools, etc.
I think this is a difficult discussion to have just because of most people's limited experience. I attended a public school in a rural area 30 + years ago in another state then from where I live now. My son is in (and my other 2 graduated from) a fairly affluent public HS. I've heard about other experiences but all I really know about is what goes on in my world.
I think a measure of how good a public school is, is if people that can afford to put their kids in privates, instead choose to keep them in the public schools. In my area, the majority of the kids are in the public's. The people that choose the privates are ones that 1)want a parochial school for religious reasons 2)have a gifted child 3) people that want smaller classes and 4) college counseling. The gifted and religious kids often come back in High School.
I agree that vouchers take away much needed money from the publics that are always over-mandated and under-funded to begin with.
anybody defending public schools is doing it for a political reason or for a financial reason.
anybody defending voucher system is doing it for the kids.
Unless you live in a state with excellent public schools. The public schools here for the most part are excellent with the exception being the inner city schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul. MN has had a voucher type system for many, many years and has done nothing to improve the quality of education in the bad schools. It has basically made some sports powerhouses out of other school though. In theory vouchers are a good thing but those that need them the most DON'T take advantage of the opportunity.
You advocate private versus public schools all you want, but when it comes to graduate school it doesn't matter where you went, because trust me the amount of work and the amount of information thrown at you is overwhelming. When I was in dental school in philadelphia I sat next to some people who were educated in private schools and let me tell you some had absolutely positively no clue as to what they were doing, and their parents were also dentists too, imagine that. Bottom line is this, if you're going into medicine (med, dental, or even vet school) take as many science courses as you can. You don't honestly think that biology is different because you went to a private school do you? My favorite was when I sat next to those supposedly smart students from private schools and saw the amount of student debt they had before starting graduate school, oh my.................
Same graduate degree, only I don't owe $200K and they do, c'mon, pay attention!
ALL children whether from disadvantaged "poor" homes or rich homes will ONLY do well when their parents are invested in the learning and education from early on.
It has NOTHING to do with rich or poor and only has to do with parental involvement.
I'm tired of people thinking poor kids do bad in school because they are poor...when it's because some of their parents don't give a crap and I'm tired of people thinking rich kids always do WELL, because they do not.
So again it all comes down to the parent's involvement on whether they do well in school or not it has nothing to do with the child's financial status or racial status either!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
