Private schools are indefensible

[midtown 3345]

1 hour ago, slorch said:

I lived in Louisiana for a year and I witnessed/ lived with people openly choosing privates so their little cracker-ass-cracker snowflake would be protected from "those other kids."   I hated it, and it was one of the single biggest factors in our only living there a year.  My kids were not going to grow up in that environment.  I also have peers at work and neighbors who send their kids to private schools as an act of conscience, telling themselves they did all they could for their kids' educations.  Queue the Will Hunting public library quote.

I can not agree with this anymore.   We had a similar thing happen in our neighborhood.   One parent had a kid that was having some social and learning issues in public school so they put him in a charter for a change.  I get it.   Then ALL the other parents wanted to "keep up with the joneses".  With the assumption that charter is automatically better    Of 9 or so families all but two of us switched to the charter.  Complete group think.  Ironically I think they have all come back to public for HS.  And my son said they all hated the charter school.   

[MNLonghornFUKM 8817]

It will continue to be that way as long as our culture doesn't give a fuck about it at the micro level.
 
My wife teaches at a school that's so poor that they're paying for her masters just to teach there. All of the kids that are struggling have parents that are tuned out of their kids education. They're so far tuned out that when my wife calls them to set up free after school tutoring to try and get them to a reading level of a kindergartener (these are end of year 2nd graders) they turn her down because they don't want to have to pick up kids twice. This isn't some sprawling suburban district by the way, but a neighborhood elementary school that services just a few blocks. 
 
My wife went to school in this district and knew it would be this way. She graduated with many of the parents of her students and she still can't convince them to help their kids for free. Next year she'll probably be moving to a strictly ESL classroom and those kids are 10x better behaved and try much harder than the regular kids in her school. They just have more to learn.

Depressing but not surprised. I’ve watched a mom “walk” up to a bus stop only to turn around and start walking back home before her precious kids are done crossing a semi busy street that’s notorious for stop arm violations.

It’s something we all know and has been echoed here before that some aren’t fitted to be parents and you can see them dragging their kids down with them

[Armybrat 40832]

Well, I recall reading last year that some schools had lost track of 25% or more of their students after the Covid shut them down. Never read any followups, but that is a national tragedy if untold hundreds of thousands of kids around the country are not getting any kind of education for an entire year.

Edited March 14, 2021 by Armybrat

[Neonmoon 38129]

The supposition that private schools are indefensible because people with means achieve a better education and thus perpetuate the cycle of inequality is interesting. Initially, I would be inclined to think everyone should receive the same education, regardless of wealth. That is fair. But then I think of the same construct applied to immigration. If individuals are not allowed to leave a bad situation and provide a better future for their children through sacrifice, whether that be hard work, savings, whatever, does that mean immigrants should stay in their own country and make it better? I only bring this up because I would think the usual proponents are flipped in each scenario but it’s kind of the same situation. 
 

If this is a thread shit, sorry,  I will respectfully go fuck myself 

[Sawbonz 27546]

10 hours ago, Bevo said:

I went to one of the top public high schools in the state. The private schools in Houston such as Kinkaid and St. Thomas were far ahead of us. And for the record, in my neighborhood the public school was not very diverse so race had nothing to do with the choice of public vs private. Private schools simply offered a better education.

I went to one of the shittiest public high schools in the state. I got to UT and was better prepared than any of the kids I had classes with who had been spoon fed from K-12 at the elite private schools. It wasn’t even close. I made a whole lot of money tutoring those kids. I guess the ones that want to go Ivy have a leg up coming from St Marks or Hockaday or the like. My kids all go to public schools and unless they had some type of learning disability I wouldn’t pay 30k a year for a private school. 
 

You can do whatever you want with your kids and your money, but at least 80% of whether they will excel in post secondary education is innate and probably most of the other 20 is how you raise them. The kids who would truly benefit from the private schools are the ones who will never get the chance to go

 

eta we moved into a neighborhood with a great elementary school where the middle school was bad and the high school marginal when my kids were in 3rd grade and kindergarten. Traditionally all the kids would switch to private for middle school and about half would come back for high school. There was a slow trend among parents to stick w the public middle school, and this reached a critical mass by the time my oldest was ready for 6th. She wound up at a magnet, but by the time my youngest got there the school was completely transformed. The high school is trending up as well.  This is helping the disadvantaged students that feed to the middle and high school tremendously both in terms of their education and getting help at home from concerned parents with the financial means to give aid. 
 

The bad thing is those disadvantaged neighborhoods that feed into the schools are now rapidly turning over because the schools are so good. 
 

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by Sawbonz

[Armybrat 40832]

The top tier of kids are going to excel no matter where they go to school, particularly if their parents are involved in their education.

[Judge Roybeanbag 11819]

7 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

I went to one of the shittiest public high schools in the state. I got to UT and was better prepared than any of the kids I had classes with who had been spoon fed from K-12 at the elite private schools. It wasn’t even close. I made a whole lot of money tutoring those kids. I guess the ones that want to go Ivy have a leg up coming from St Marks or Hockaday or the like. My kids all go to public schools and unless they had some type of learning disability I wouldn’t pay 30k a year for a private school. 
 

You can do whatever you want with your kids and your money, but at least 80% of whether they will excel in post secondary education is innate and probably most of the other 20 is how you raise them. The kids who would truly benefit from the private schools are the ones who will never get the chance to go

Agree but I would say it’s more 70-30 or even 60-40, on environment and how they’re raised.  And that’s the part that seems impossible to fix.

[ABSR 5309]

3 hours ago, Armybrat said:

You post here and claim to be well adjusted? 😉

While there have always been poor public schools, I believe the general decline in the modern era began with the “loosening” of the American culture in the 1960s. Old school discipline fell out of favor which coincided with the decline in widespread employment of former high school football coaches as principals. That was due to the then new “woke” thinking among college education departments, it seems.
Then came desegregation and the new phenomena of parents showing up at disciplinary conferences with lawyers to intimidate administrators. Plus the growth of entitlement attitudes and “my kid does no wrong, the teacher is at fault”.

All that in addition to the White Flight to escape integration and/or the decline in school quality. 
JMHO

Caveat: My HS alma mater was St. Edward’s in Austin (opened in 1878, closed in 1967).

 

Look here!  I don’t care if you say my senior only has 1.5 credits.   You kept moving him on and he is in the top half of the class, so we are graduating and going to Sizzler to celebrate!

[TKthunder2 4988]

2 hours ago, Message Board User said:

A quick google shows that the average teacher salary in Texas is between 50K-60K, maybe higher or lower depending on the school district.

How much more money do we need to pay teachers to make it an attractive profession?

As has been stated above, the problem with public schools is NOT lack of money.

 

2 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

It depends on the type of candidate you’re wanting to attract. At that band, you’re paying in line with cops, mid-level  managers and administrators, some of the skilled trades, etc. 

Yeah this point always rang hollow for me.  I have 7 teachers in my family and they make pretty good money, especially in the non-metro areas.  Maybe you can make an argument that teachers in inner city Houston/Dallas etc should make more but I don’t think throwing $10-$20k more at teachers will solve this issue.  Especially when most only work 70% of the days a normal job would require.  It’s a solid middle class profession.  If you have two parents that are teachers you’re not poor.  People don’t get into teaching to get rich, and if you want/need to make more money there are other opportunities (coaching/admin/bus driver/crossing guard/summer school/ged school/sat prep/drivers ed/tutoring) plus you could always get a job in the private sector (I know many that have).

[washparkhorn 9939]

4 hours ago, futureman said:

 

The bulk of the problem lies with uninvolved parents, not the involved few. 

And God Bless the educators out there actively trying to reach every student. It is almost an impossible job, but I appreciate the dedicated professionals unwilling to overlook the potential of every student. 

We all learn (or reject learning) differently. 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

5 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

The bulk of the problem lies with uninvolved parents, not the involved few. 

And God Bless the educators out there actively trying to reach every student. It is almost an impossible job, but I appreciate the dedicated professionals unwilling to overlook the potential of every student. 

We all learn (or reject learning) differently. 

Reason 1-10 is uninvolved parents.

[huge 3793]

I remember in my first semester at UT there were two guys in my hall at Towers that went to St Marks.  "The finest preparatory school in the Southwest!" Or so they said.  They said that because of this they really didn't need to go to class.  

 

They both ended up on probation after that semester.

[Helobious 9448]

2 hours ago, midtown said:

I can not agree with this anymore.   We had a similar thing happen in our neighborhood.   One parent had a kid that was having some social and learning issues in public school so they put him in a charter for a change.  I get it.   Then ALL the other parents wanted to "keep up with the joneses".  With the assumption that charter is automatically better    Of 9 or so families all but two of us switched to the charter.  Complete group think.  Ironically I think they have all come back to public for HS.  And my son said they all hated the charter school.   

My cousin taught at one of the IDEA campuses in SA for 2 years. She said the principal decided to entirely drop science from the 6th grade curriculum, because it wasn’t going to be a promotion-dependent subject on the STAAR that year. There’s all kinds of pros and cons to public/private, and even homeschooling. But I’d never send my kid to a charter school. They do some weird shit.

[Judge Roybeanbag 11819]

14 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Reason 1-10 is uninvolved parents.

Or over-involved parents in denial that their kids are shitheads.  

[Bruno Sardine 147]

Here we are in the middle of this terrible pandemic, hoping for smart people (the scientist-types who develop vaccines) to save our asses.  I am guessing these smart people did not attend crappy inner city public schools, the overseers of which, like all the rest of us, are depending on these very same geniuses to save their butts. 

But ironically, they themselves are not interested in producing exceptional intellects. Their focus is NOT on achieving academic excellence in the classroom. Instead, their focus is on serving the lowest common denominator in an effort to reduce the “achievement gap.” A worthy policy objective to be sure, but not at the expense of lowering standards and expectations. Just one example: in many inner city school systems, teachers, even at the high school level, are told activities shouldn’t last for more than ten or fifteen minutes, lest the concentration of the students lapse. You think private school teachers are handicapped by such absurd dictates? 

The people who run our inner city schools are the problem. 

Edited March 14, 2021 by Bruno Sardine

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

14 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Or over-involved parents in denial that their kids are shitheads.  

That gate swings both ways.

[washparkhorn 9939]

5 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Or over-involved parents in denial that their kids they themselves are shitheads.  

Most humans live unexamined lives. 

 

[cactusflinthead 27598]

22 minutes ago, huge said:

I remember in my first semester at UT there were two guys in my hall at Towers that went to St Marks.  "The finest preparatory school in the Southwest!" Or so they said.  They said that because of this they really didn't need to go to class.  

 

They both ended up on probation after that semester.

Hi. I did the same after going from Cistercian to UT. 

"This is the same book from their sophomore year English! What a blowoff. I'm on easy street. Let's get stoned."

You still have to show up. 

I checked out the school system before we moved. I was determined to keep the kids in the same HS for all four years, if at all possible. I'm satisfied with what they received. 

There's a wide range of what teachers get paid. A lot of little districts are paying the state minimum. All that money we spend on education isn't necessarily going to teaching. Funny how we can get money to construct the building but not one dime to maintain it. 

 

 

[cactusflinthead 27598]

Dp

 

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by cactusflinthead

[Cajun 11705]

11 hours ago, fattyflattie said:

We are very likely going to make the switch this year. 3 kids. Fuck me. 

Smart man.

[Message Board User 12395]

36 minutes ago, Bruno Sardine said:

Their focus is NOT on achieving academic excellence in the classroom. Instead, their focus is on serving the lowest common denominator in an effort to reduce the “achievement gap.” A worthy policy objective to be sure, but not at the expense of lowering standards and expectations.

The soft bigotry of low expectations.

[ouflak 60]

5 hours ago, Incredulity said:

 

 

We spend a large  amount of money per student, #2 per student globally. The results are dogshit.

Having lived in three countries, and spent significant amounts of time in several others, I really don't think that's true. All the other countries I've been to have kids who are just trying to get along from one day to the next the same as ours, many with the same kind of stories in their backgrounds. It's just that when you try compare the educational systems, you end up with apples/oranges that skew the appearance of 'results' - often wildly. This is especially true in countries where you have academic and non-academic student/school separation at age 10-12 and/or possibly later (again) at age 15-16. America's school system is always compared against those school system paths with the more academic kids. And there's never an attempt to capture and compare the overall which includes those kids who go the trade-school/remedial routes, or drop out altogther.

Makes for great bi-annual headlines I guess, but I wonder what a true comparison would look like, and even if such a comparison is truly possible or fair.

Edited March 14, 2021 by ouflak

[Sbbruin 21842]

24 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

The soft bigotry of low expectations.

This harkens to the other thread on the Baltimore HS student.  We need to stop committing to move every kid forward.  At a certain point, they are either in or they are out.  Maybe we subsidize trade schools for those who can’t cut it academically.  But as been addressed, slowing down to the speed of the slowest, or often least engaged, students is destroying the public school system.  At least out here.

[Captainant 27653]

39 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

This harkens to the other thread on the Baltimore HS student.  We need to stop committing to move every kid forward.  At a certain point, they are either in or they are out.  Maybe we subsidize trade schools for those who can’t cut it academically.  But as been addressed, slowing down to the speed of the slowest, or often least engaged, students is destroying the public school system.  At least out here.

No child left behind really fucked things up in that regard IMO

[CHIEF 5079]

54 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

This harkens to the other thread on the Baltimore HS student.  We need to stop committing to move every kid forward.  At a certain point, they are either in or they are out.  Maybe we subsidize trade schools for those who can’t cut it academically.  But as been addressed, slowing down to the speed of the slowest, or often least engaged, students is destroying the public school system.  At least out here.

I remember when they taught reading in elementary school. Everybody would take out their books and read along. It was a lower middle class blue collar school in a railroad town. One of the "areas" of pride was when the teacher called on you, you would start reading exactly where the last person left off.

There were two kinds of kids that usually got embarrassed. The first were the ones that had no idea how to read, and so had no idea where we were, in the book, because they couldn't keep up.

I was in the second group. I had no patience to sit around and wait for some idiot to take 30 seconds to sound out a complete sentence. When called on, I had no idea where we were in the book, I was 10-15 pages ahead. So the teacher would come over with her book and roll me back to where the class was for me to start reading. I was looked at with the same disdain as the idiot, but for a completely different reason.

CHIEF

[Message Board User 12395]

1 hour ago, Sbbruin said:

This harkens to the other thread on the Baltimore HS student.  We need to stop committing to move every kid forward.  At a certain point, they are either in or they are out.  Maybe we subsidize trade schools for those who can’t cut it academically.  But as been addressed, slowing down to the speed of the slowest, or often least engaged, students is destroying the public school system.  At least out here.

A few years ago, I read The Smartest Kids in the World - highly recommend.

The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way: Ripley, Amanda: 0884897274245: Amazon.com: Books

So what makes the other countries so much better at school than us?  The key, the author says, is rigor - high expectations for kids, high expectations for parents, and high expectations for teachers and schools.  Essentially, laziness is not tolerated.

It's one of the reasons we yanked our kids from public and put them in charter - our public schools catered to the lowest common denominator, my kids were bored to death, and when we confronted the principal with our concerns, her response was "Well, you have to remember, we have a lot of Title 1 kids..."  

[Message Board User 12395]

2 hours ago, Helobious said:

But I’d never send my kid to a charter school. They do some weird shit.

My kids are in charter, and yeah they do some weird shit.

Shit like:

• Actually give grades on assignments and during grading periods
• Don't show movies every other day in class
• Not sticking a tablet in front of their face
• Tailor assignments to their abilities (my 1st grader is already reading chapter books and so the teacher is giving her more challenging work - never would have happened in public)
• And communicate with us on the reg about our kid's progress

So weird.

Edited March 14, 2021 by Message Board User

[Helobious 9448]

5 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

My kids are in charter, and yeah they do some weird shit.

Shit like:

• Actually give grades on assignments and during grading periods
• Don't show movies every other day in class
• Not sticking a tablet in front of their face
• Tailor assignments to their abilities (my 1st grader is already reading chapter books and so the teacher is giving her more challenging work - never would have happened in public)
• And communicate with us on the reg about our kid's progress

So weird.

I went to public school, every single one of those things happened. 

[Message Board User 12395]

1 minute ago, Helobious said:

I went to public school, every single one of those things happened. 

How long ago?

[Helobious 9448]

Just now, Message Board User said:

How long ago?

Graduated high school in 2012.

[Nivek 16923]

The way I read the article is that there exists a pipeline to the elite ivy's and that is based on economic standing, and how they get the advantage is by teaching university sophomore level academics in those private schools in order to gain those advantages and the impact it has on the kids (how they are stressed out).   Is this really a surprise?

(Multi-quote is working for shit) but one poster mentioned that private schools are a waste.  That is a typical simplistic viewpoint.   If your goal is to give your kid an education that is equivalent to public school, but the school offers you little else, then it is a waste.  I am certain those who send their kids to private schools do so for a reason, ranging from religious to behavioral.

 

3 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

The bulk of the problem lies with uninvolved parents, not the involved few. 

What is the cause of the uninvolved parent?  What is the source for this statement?  Again, it seems the relationship between wealth and academic achievement is more established.  Maybe if parents were not working multiple jobs or dual income, they could invest more time.   The links for this are in the Baltimore Kid thread.

[washparkhorn 9939]

13 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

The key, the author says, is rigor - high expectations for kids, high expectations for parents, and high expectations for teachers and schools.

 

 

[Message Board User 12395]

1 minute ago, Helobious said:

Graduated high school in 2012.

So elementary school in the early-aughts...I can tell you things have changed. 

And our experience with charters has been exceptional and there's a reason why Obama and Harold Dutton (Dem out of Houston) are/were unapologetic supporters of charter schools.

[Nivek 16923]

21 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

My kids are in charter, and yeah they do some weird shit.

Shit like:

• Actually give grades on assignments and during grading periods
• Don't show movies every other day in class
• Not sticking a tablet in front of their face
• Tailor assignments to their abilities (my 1st grader is already reading chapter books and so the teacher is giving her more challenging work - never would have happened in public)
• And communicate with us on the reg about our kid's progress

So weird.

This is just bullshit.  My kids are in public schools and do not watch movies except on a rare special holiday occasion (1st grade).   They have grades.  They have tablets because they are virtual but teach live instruction to the students present and you can communicate with your teacher as often as you like.  I keep an open dialog with my kids teachers.   

I also graduated HS in 1993.  That shit didn't even happen in my crap school.   Though they did not tailor assignments as much as put kids into different classes.  (remedial math vs calc.).  

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by Nivek

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

16 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

But the choice to send your kids to one seems fundamentally American.

we don't really agree on what that means anymore, so it's pretty easy to see how people would see a lot of logic in the premise

[Brothahorn 10087]

22 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

I remember when they taught reading in elementary school. Everybody would take out their books and read along. It was a lower middle class blue collar school in a railroad town. One of the "areas" of pride was when the teacher called on you, you would start reading exactly where the last person left off.

There were two kinds of kids that usually got embarrassed. The first were the ones that had no idea how to read, and so had no idea where we were, in the book, because they couldn't keep up.

I was in the second group. I had no patience to sit around and wait for some idiot to take 30 seconds to sound out a complete sentence. When called on, I had no idea where we were in the book, I was 10-15 pages ahead. So the teacher would come over with her book and roll me back to where the class was for me to start reading. I was looked at with the same disdain as the idiot, but for a completely different reason.

CHIEF

Biggest adjustment going from private to public in the 5th grade was not being able to learn at my own pace anymore. So now I'm bored out of my mind listening to Susan struggle to read two paragraphs. That's when the behavioral issues started. Took me a couple of months to adjust. 

 

Couldn't imagine going from private to public, today.

[Sbbruin 21842]

Clearly the quality of public school covers the spectrum.  There are a few public school systems around me, San Marino and La Canada specifically, that I would send my kids to in a heartbeat.  But there’s a couple hundred grand premium to live in those districts, so it’s a wash.  

[Message Board User 12395]

4 minutes ago, Nivek said:

This is just bullshit.  My kids are in public schools and do not watch movies except on a rare special holiday occasion (1st grade).   They have grades.  They have tablets because they are virtual but teach live instruction to the students present and you can communicate with your teacher as often as you like.  I keep an open dialog with my kids teachers.  

 

Good for you and your kids.  Looks like you got lucky with your public school.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Nivek said:

What is the cause of the uninvolved parent?  What is the source for this statement?  Again, it seems the relationship between wealth and academic achievement is more established.  Maybe if parents were not working multiple jobs or dual income, they could invest more time.   The links for this are in the Baltimore Kid thread.

You can be dead ass broke, sole provider, single parent and still have high expectations of your kids when it comes to education.  Ask me how I know...LOlz.

You seem to be in love with excuses.  Lots of people are.  That's the problem.   They're worried about feelings instead of parenting.

It's Ok though... because we as a society are in love with this shit now.  Just do what the fuck you want in the world.  Someone will carry you the rest of the way...

Edited March 14, 2021 by slorch

[Homercles 10205]

5 hours ago, Armybrat said:

Well, I recall reading last year that some schools had lost track of 25% or more of their students after the Covid shut them down. Never read any followups, but that is a national tragedy if untold hundreds of thousands of kids around the country are not getting any kind of education for an entire year.

This is absolutely true and was going to post this in response to parents investment in their education.  My wife is a counselor at an elementary school with enough problems and low income families that they have two counselors that are constantly full tilt busy...from anonymous snack pantries to obvious CPS situations that break my heart.  Hell one poor soul was apparently murdered by his mom and/or her boyfriend last week with boiling fucking water that immediately made me tear up, memories of poor Colton Turner (RIP little buddy).  
 

Feel like lots of people don’t care about their kids, period, let alone their education.  
 

Before covid many of these parents never bothered to return phone calls, emails or even house visits.  Once spring break 2020 became covid lockdown, a huge chunk of these kids simply vanished...same deal where calls, emails, texts, etc turned up nothing and almost none bothered even telling the school what they were up to.  

My wife has a masters degree + certs to be a counselor and makes about 55k gross...not sure where average teacher salary gets to 50-60, at least not in Wilco public schools I can tell you that.  

[washparkhorn 9939]

 

5 minutes ago, Nivek said:

What is the cause of the uninvolved parent? 

They had uninvolved parents and they are repeating the cycle with their own kids? 

[Helobious 9448]

2 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

So elementary school in the early-aughts...I can tell you things have changed. 

And our experience with charters has been exceptional and there's a reason why Obama and Harold Dutton (Dem out of Houston) are/were unapologetic supporters of charter schools.

I will say charter schools are good for getting public districts to step their game up. Here in San Antonio, SAISD was losing students to charters left & right. They really started investing in magnet schools, and now CAST is a really high performing school specializing in Tech & computer science. Curriculum designed like college, and in high school part of the program is at least one summer internship with a local company like Rackspace. I don’t see any privates or charters offering up that kind stuff yet. It’s a hard program to get into though.

[Sbbruin 21842]

3 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

Biggest adjustment going from private to public in the 5th grade was not being able to learn at my own pace anymore. So now I'm bored out of my mind listening to Susan struggle to read two paragraphs. That's when the behavioral issues started. Took me a couple of months to adjust. 

 

Couldn't imagine going from private to public, today.

I went from public elementary, one of the best in LA, to the school she describes in her story, which is widely considered the top private school in SoCal and one of the top in the country, and I was seriously light years behind most of my peers when I got there.  I was stunned because up until then I thought I was really smart.  I felt like a moron.  Or I realized I was a moron.  One or the other.  

[Nivek 16923]

1 minute ago, Message Board User said:

Good for you and your kids.  Looks like you got lucky with your public school.

Not really.  I actually don't think grades are very useful.  My kids are acing their material but I don't really place much value on it.   It demonstrates his ability to test well, not his ability to think through a complex issue.  

[956 Worldwide 34705]

49 minutes ago, Nivek said:

The way I read the article is that there exists a pipeline to the elite ivy's and that is based on economic standing, and how they get the advantage is by teaching university sophomore level academics in those private schools in order to gain those advantages and the impact it has on the kids (how they are stressed out).   Is this really a surprise?

(Multi-quote is working for shit) but one poster mentioned that private schools are a waste.  That is a typical simplistic viewpoint.   If your goal is to give your kid an education that is equivalent to public school, but the school offers you little else, then it is a waste.  I am certain those who send their kids to private schools do so for a reason, ranging from religious to behavioral.

 

What is the cause of the uninvolved parent?  What is the source for this statement?  Again, it seems the relationship between wealth and academic achievement is more established.  Maybe if parents were not working multiple jobs or dual income, they could invest more time.   The links for this are in the Baltimore Kid thread.

I think the finances here are also being overlooked.  Exeter has a 1.3 billion dollar endowment and 1,100 kids. The capital campaigns for these schools are insane. It’s absolutely not an efficient allocation of education funds. 
 

Key to note here is that we are talking about a few dozen, maybe a hundred truly elite schools.  The vast majority of private and parochial schools have much tighter budgets. Similar to how the conversation goes with churches, the mega temples have truly obscene budgets and salaries but most of them are trying to keep their buildings, a pastor, and the lights on. 

[Sawbonz 27546]

30 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

I went from public elementary, one of the best in LA, to the school she describes in her story, which is widely considered the top private school in SoCal and one of the top in the country, and I was seriously light years behind most of my peers when I got there.  I was stunned because up until then I thought I was really smart.  I felt like a moron.  Or I realized I was a moron.  One or the other.  

I honestly want to know what the private school kids were learning that you weren’t. Because if it isn’t calculus and physics in 8th grade, or your 4th year of a foreign language or first year of a second foreign language, those kids would not be even a grade level ahead of my public school kids. And those options are available to my kids if I were an insane parent

[Bill Lumbergh 7171]

Interesting topic.

My wife and I both went to public schools and are both reasonably successful. I went to private for one year and hated it, went back to public. The private school I went to was relatively small, a lot of the kids there had been in the same building with the same kids since kindergarten. For me, it felt really strange. Didn't like anything about it.

Because of that experience and both of us doing well coming out of public school, we intend to send our kids to public as well. We both also had parents highly engaged in our education, and are already engaged heavily in our kids at home.

The desire to have them in public has impacted a lot of decisions we've made. We currently live in one of the best school districts in the state. If we didn't, we would move. We have thought over the past year about moving, and looked at several areas we would like to live but will not consider bc of the poor public schools.

I'll also say, we would like to start our kids in public and work with them to try to make it work, but if there's a safety or academic progress concern that we can't address, I won't hesitate to send them to private. My job is to make sure they get a good education and that they're safe and developing socially at the same time. If those things are not all happening in public, we'll deal with it however is necessary.

On the topic of the article, our thoughts on relocation highlight a lot of the problems with fixing public school systems. Where we live now is fairly affluent. High property taxes = good funding for schools = schools that are rated highly = desirable areas to live with high house values and high property taxes. The cycle feeds itself. On the other hand, if we moved to some of the areas we like that have poorly rated schools, we would send our kids to private, and not engage in trying to improve the public schools. I'm willing to bet that's how nearly all people with the means treat this situation, and as a result, the public schools don't improve. I have no idea how you fix that. You're not going to convince parents with means to send their kids to poor performing schools. That is also indefensible.

Last thought on this, there is a very large, popular, and expensive private school in our city with the highly rated public school system. That part I do not understand at all. Property taxes are really high here mostly to fund the public schools. If you live here, you're paying those either way. Why live here and pay those taxes for the great public schools, but still send your kids to an expensive private? If we decide to go the private route at some point, there are a ton of areas where we'd be excited to live that would suddenly be an option. I don't understand moving to an area that's expensive largely due to the school system and then but taking advantage of not needing private school. But, it's not my $.

[Bevo 13576]

3 hours ago, huge said:

I remember in my first semester at UT there were two guys in my hall at Towers that went to St Marks.  "The finest preparatory school in the Southwest!" Or so they said.  They said that because of this they really didn't need to go to class.  

 

They both ended up on probation after that semester.

The top of the class at St. Marks probably weren't going to UT. UT is a fallback school for many upper tier top siders. 

[Neonmoon 38129]

42 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

 

They had uninvolved parents and they are repeating the cycle with their own kids? 

Now we are getting to the real meat of the problem. I think everyone agrees that involved parents is huge reason why kids are successful. The parents had high expectations for their kids and enforced them. Why are some parents not involved? Was it because their parents didn’t give a shit? Is it because they worked two jobs or three jobs and didn’t have time? As another poster said, some school systems in other countries are great because they have high expectations for students, parents, teachers. Laziness is not tolerated. People are challenged to do better.  

[Bevo 13576]

9 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

I honestly want to know what the private school kids were learning that you weren’t. Because if it isn’t calculus and physics in 8th grade, or your 4th year of a foreign language or first year of a second foreign language, those kids would not be even a grade level ahead of my public school kids. And those options are available to my kids if I were an insane parent

In math, you could compare the AP student in a good public school to the standard prep student - so not a whole lot of difference. For English, we had to read a few books over the summer. Prep student had to read about 16 books. So liberal arts was much more advanced in private school. For foreign language, I think what was taught was about the same. However, the competition and the need to excel was greater in the private school. I think in public school, we had a tendency to screw around.