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The alternative is a CA public high school that ranks in the 90 percentile.
No doubt, private high school will deliver a more rigorous curriculum. I am wondering if the difference justifies the spending.
The biggest difference between private and public school is teacher student ratio. My children attended private boarding school where the ratio was 9 students per class. It was well worth it to ensure that the children get the individual attention and enriched curriculum for successful launch into post-secondary choices and career.
This is a very good point. Parents of bright kids who tend to slack in public school, because it's easier to get by with less effort, send their kids to private school to force the to develop discipline.
This is absolutely key for success in college, btw, OP. You want a student who's self-motivated, good with time management, meeting deadlines, and all that, because once they get to college, there will be less structure than in HS, so students who haven't developed good study habits and self-motivation tend to flounder in college. The others are able to chug along on their own steam just fine.
We don’t know anything about the school in question. That is the issue. My sister said she would never move to the adjacent public school district because it is such a pressure cooker environment even at elementary school level with lots of homework. I have friends who have kids in elementary schools like that too... very good districts. In many cases parents who move to those districts are motivated to have their kids do well.
The alternative is a CA public high school that ranks in the 90 percentile.
No doubt, private high school will deliver a more rigorous curriculum. I am wondering if the difference justifies the spending.
Some of those idiot parents got caught paying $100K bribes to get their idiot kids into universities.
if something is lacking at home, we can't pay someone else to provide it.
If you are going to decide your child's fate by a public vote, my vote is to send him to the public school and if he is not a motivated student, spend some money on one-on-one tutoring. It will be cheaper and he will get more individual attention that way.
He likes tennis? Make tennis lessons with a talented pro a reward for good school work, week by week. You'll get more bang for the buck with that than with tuition to a private school.
I would not send my child to a private school unless the public school was actually physically dangerous. Part of schooling is that kids must learn to get along and fit themselves in. But when my kid was in school, I made darn sure he did the work and understood the lesson every day.
I don't have much experience with private schools, but one of my son's buddies in elementary school was a rather dim bulb. A really nice kid from a really nice family, but not very bright.
His parents took him out of public school and put him in privates school and they were ecstatic that he started to get all A's.
The problem that I could see with it, was the next year when the kids were talking about school, I could tell that the buddy was a good solid year behind my kid in what he was studying. He was getting good grades because he was given easy work. Still, maybe it was the best because it boosted the child's confidence; who knows.
Everyone I know who went to a catholic school, all they got out of it was lots of stories about the cruelty of the nuns.
At least where I live at the moment (with 2 school-aged kids) you can't have a truly honest discussion about public vs. private without including aspects of class and race. It's not pretty, which is why these discussions are rarely 100% honest.
I have found that with a little homework--by the parents--you can find a public school path for your kids that will be just as useful and rewarding as a private school one. It takes a little work, it's not just looking on greatschools for your neighborhood school's score. There are so many magnets, charters, academies, etc. it's mindboggling. And it's funny...since finding out about these resources take some effort, the kinds of students who attend already have motivated and engaged parents so they benefit from that, regardless of race or SES.
And IMHO, the public schools often reflect the make up of the real world vastly more than privates do, and I think that's a very important part of education and citizenship.
4. Being mediocre in a rigorous program may not be as attractive to college admission people as being the top 5% of a decent public school. This I have firsthand experience - I went to one of the worst high schools in town, was in many advance classes, and made it to Berkeley. Getting into the best colleges these days requires a very good strategy rather than just blindly getting into the most rigorous program.
This caught my eye. My youngest child went to a very good public elementary school, but the public high school she was zoned for was mediocre at best. I wanted to put her in a private high school, but her father (my ex) didn't want to pay for it, and my daughter was adamantly opposed to it. So she went to the mediocre public school, and here's what happened.
She ended up graduating number 12 out of a class of 750. Now I'll admit she was a very hard-working, focused student, but her class rank says as much about the other students as it does about her hard work.
Because of her excellent grades and her high class rank, she was admitted to a very prestigious university with considerable scholarship support. She says if she had gone to the private high school, she'd have ended up much lower in class rank, and she'd never have been accepted by the university of her choice.
She admitted that she was very underprepared for the university's academics; in fact, she had to hire a tutor to help her pass organic chemistry. But even with her lack of preparation because of attending a crummy high school, she graduated from the university with honors and went on to get a master's degree and eventually a Ph.D.
She's still friends with people she went to high school with, even though they're now in their 40's and live thousands of miles apart. She's convinced that going to her crummy public high school was right for her.
If you send him to the public school and spend part of what would have been tuition money on enrichment/tutoring, you could basically have the best of both worlds.
Quality of public and private schools varies hugely. I wouldn't send a kid to any of the private options in my region - they're all religion-based and basically one step away from being flat earthers. (There ARE good religious schools...we just don't have any.) In the town were I grew up we had one main public HS and one main private HS (there were a few other niche programs, but these two were dominant). The public HS had a far greater variety of course offerings, and stronger extracurriculars. The public HS had lower lows and higher highs in academic performance than the private school - families with money routinely transferred kids who were low performing (either due to laziness/behavior, lack of aptitude, or both) to the private school because it was much harder to fail there, but for strong, self-motivated students, the public school was the better choice due to more AP and advanced options. Private school sent pretty much everyone to college of some sort; public school sent a smaller percentage of students to college, but a greater percentage of them to more highly regarded, competitive colleges.
If the public school in your area already ranks 90 percentile, you may want to have your child go there and save the extra cash for college. I would rather live in the area that has great public school than have my kid going to the private school and pay a huge amount of money for that. I think good education starts at home.
The people who are spending anything close to $42k per year fall into two categories - those with substantial financial resources and those on scholarship from very meager resources. It is less an issue of "getting one's money worth" as it is getting into the top schools. Many of the graduates of these schools are getting a large number of scholarships which help to offset some of that cost.
Also, often a good portion of the tuition covers opportunities that you will not get at your average high school - trips, scholastic competitions, and the like.
For the record, I attended a middle school in a top 10 school district. It was a great school BUT I was tired of being unable to use the restroom without seeing people shooting up with needles. I went to a parochial school in the inner-city but it was nowhere close to $40k even adjusted for inflation.
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