How are private high schools better preparing kids over public schools?

Parents Forum
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<p>poetgrl, Even if the neighborhood is not diverse, the private school-- by the very fact that they are choosing students who can afford them/ agree to their philosophy and or religion/ cannot accommodate certain disabilities-- are even less diverse. </p>

<p>woeishe, can you please provide any proof of your statement? Generally speaking, public schools are more diverse than private schools in the country-- and, frankly, I have yet to meet a URM who hasn’t had a difficult time in an elite private school. I have found URMs who have been comfortable in Catholic schools or the like but, in some areas, Catholic schools are heavily Hispanic and/ or black. Elite private schools? Sorry-- they are not diverse places.</p>

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<p>^ Just because a place is diverse doesn’t mean it’s truly diverse. Take my school for example, on the surface you could say it is diverse, but deep down it isn’t diverse at all.</p>

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<p>Our kids go to a very selective private school, and contrary to what ordinarylives seems to think, the last thing we care about is being in some kind of circle. After almost 12 years of this school, I can’t say it has somehow ‘connected’ us (beyond what we already have from our careers). We are two professors with nerd kids and our circles are other academics and nerd children, lol. Now if we wanted connections, I suppose it would have made sense to join the golf club and country club near us. </p>

<p>It’s culturally diverse, big time, but not very economically diverse. But then our public school would not be very economically diverse either because of the area in which we live. </p>

<p>The way we have rationalize the cost is with the following:

  • small classes and small tight knit community with great values
  • fantastic facilities, resources, and opportunities
  • at this particular school, a lot of emphasis (from grade one onward) on things like presentations and public speaking, working in groups, critical thinking and argumentation, writing, and lots of emphasis on learning how to learn, how to study etc
  • they only hire and keep great teachers
  • lots of personalized attention from the teachers and the administration (for both the kids and the parents). Every teacher and staff person knows my kids by name, even ones who have never taught them.<br>
  • most importantly, the kids are collectively very academically minded, motivated, and able, so they can move quickly through course material, the whole culture of the school is achievement oriented, and the ‘norm’ is to excel not goof off </p>

<p>My kids will go to a nice Canadian public school. There was no climbing to Ivy. This has just been a great place to get educated and more importantly, a great place to grow up (as in the school itself, and the student body, has played a strong and positive role in their overall academic but also personal development).</p>

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<p>Again, 2collegewego, I think it depends on the neighborhood and school. Our local public is maybe one percent African American. My kid’s elite private is probably about five percent AA. The local public has had a few well publicized incidents of religious/racial intolerance. Not true at any of the privates in the area. I don’t know of any URMs who have had problems at privates but do know of many who have had problems at publics. </p>

<p>I do agree that there is less diversity in terms of disabilities at most privates. Most privates are not set up to deal with Learning disabilities such as dyslexia, etc. Most privates also have less socioeconomic diversity. However, it seems that most do make at least some effort to have bright, low income kids.</p>

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<p>I go to a very competitive public magnet, and went to private school before that. IMO the single biggest factor that makes private > public is the quality of teaching. I have had amazing teachers at my public HS, and I’m sure that the very best teachers at private high schools are no better than the very best at publics. </p>

<p>But when you look at ALL the teachers, it’s clear the privates have a huge advantage. In public schools, because of the unions, teachers with seniority or who get tenure basically have to engage in sexual harassment or drug use to get fired. Nothing can be done about a really awful teacher who’s been in the system for years. I have suffered through some pretty terrible teachers–one actually admitted to our class that he hated kids and hated teaching! At a private school, such a teacher would be gone the second parents started complaining. In the public school, such teachers stick around, and energetic, new young teachers get fired first when the money’s tight (which it always is).</p>

<p>Other issues have been raised by people on this thread and are valid. For instance, counselors at my school are responsible for about 500 kids, and are in charge not just of college stuff but also correcting and assigning schedules, kids who are having problems at home or emotional issues, that sort of thing. These counselors know less than the average CC person about college admissions, and they gear everyone for state schools.</p>

<p>Also, because class sizes are bigger, teachers cannot give as much personal attention to each kid. This means that we don’t get many comments on our essays, essays are not assigned very frequently, and there is no follow-up or discussion about the student’s writing. In fact, I’ve never written a research paper before.</p>

<p>Those are what I see as the primary issues. I have compared a top-ranked public to privates. Unfortunately, even the best public schools, IMO, don’t provide as good of an education as top-flight privates. When you look at average public schools it’s a whole other can of worms, with many more issues.</p>

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<p>Our public schools were excellent making any list of top public high schools. My D1 got as good an education that I could have asked for from any school. Now we have budget cuts and parents in a state of denial about just how bad the effects will be. The worst of the crisis has been averted for a year, but the remaining cuts are still really bad. Great teachers have been let go. The deterioration in just two years has been staggering. D2’s educational opportunities will be severely curtailed. I wish we had done private school for high school, but did not foresee how bad it would be. </p>

<p>I recommend to my younger colleagues looking for homes intending to use the public schools to look not just at test scores but at school funding and a town’s willingness to pass elections to fund the schools. State test scores measure for the most part, the socioeconomic makeup of the community and the degree to which parents are educated. AP scores measure both offerings and achievement. </p>

<p>I don’t expect my town’s state test scores to drop an iota, but the APs, or lack thereof, will tell the real story - two years too late.</p>

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<p>2collegewego- on the diversity issue, sorry about your experience-I think this experience can vary widely- but in our particular case, our local public school system is not very accepting, largely consisting of upper middle class white professionals, while there is a minority of African American students, there is little mixing of the races socially and also the AA students are largely segregated into the learning support classes. It is a huge problem for us locally.</p>

<p>On the other hand, our private school, through offering scholarships, actually attracts a higher percentage of minority students, and they are offered the same curriculum and integrated socially into the school. Our school promotes a religious philosophy of tolerance and social justice. </p>

<p>our school has a visible LGBT community including faculty members who are “out” whereas the atmosphere at our local public is very homophobic</p>

<p>our experience may not be typical, but as people above have said, its difficult to make generalizations</p>

<p>BTW this school is not one of the “elite” schools that people are talking about on this forum…</p>

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<p>As a parent of children in both public and private, I concur with much of what has been said here.</p>

<p>First and foremost, they way writing is taught and used at our child’s private school is head and shoulders above what my oldest experienced at public middle and high school. This seems to be a common point in many of the posters’ comments and it is most likely tied ot class size and class load, as well as the over arching philosophy of the privates.</p>

<p>College counseling matters less to me, because you can hire a good private college counselor for a lot less than a year of tuition. But the counseling is superior at my son’s private school.</p>

<p>In our community, most private school kids, especially those who start in elementary school, truly have no connections with neighborhood kids. That is hard and because we are in a large metro area, the good private schools draw kids from all over. </p>

<p>There are also lots of private schools that aren’t as academically strong as even middle of the road public schools. These schools offer something parents are looking for they stay fairly full. Each year, though students leave because the academics aren’t rigorous enough. </p>

<p>Finally, in my large urban/suburban school system top kids can do ok at most of our high schools. It is the kids in the middle who flounder.</p>

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<p>Private schools can be much more diverse than public ones. When I lived in the midwest, there were maybe 3 AA families at the huge public school. But the privates there were at least 5% AA with Hispanics and many other nationalities there. THere were also scholarship students there who were poorer economically than anyone that school district which was not only 99% white and asian, but also decidedly upper middle class.</p>

<p>Many districts here in this area that have very little diversity. Our county as a whole is very diverse but that does not mean the individual school districts in it are. There are schools with no free lunch program–no need for it. So when you compare that to the private schools, you will get more diversity in the privates. There are also school districts that are more than 70% black and hispanic which are representative of their population. Many of the kid I know who went to my sons’ private school, would have gone to schools that were pretty much populated almost entirely with people of color. So those kids certainly got more diversity going to a private school.</p>

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<p>Even those who feel the sting of private school tuition or who sacrifice to afford it, CAN afford it. I think it’s valid to argue that economics definitely play into what makes these schools better at positioning their students for college acceptance.</p>

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<p>My concern about comparing ACT tests to judge your public school is that these will be higher in a uniformly affluent school district than one that incorporates some lower income neighborhoods. If your district includes students from blue collar homes where English is not the first language, that will likely skew the ACTS scores down but this will have no effect on the types of people here on CC. The best publics will have AP curriculum depth to challenge accelerated students. Without question the academic private schools should have better college counseling since the guidance counseling to student ratios are higher. I thought my kids’ public high school was great and stronger than any local private option given that they were superb students. Had they been more middle of the pack, I might feel differently and looked elsewhere to get smaller class sizes.</p>

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<p>In our area, the private schools with a few exceptions are either affiliated with a religious group, or sprung to life around the time that public schools were desegregated. These schools have minority students now, but not very many. Public schools are way more diverse, while magnet programs (like the IB magnet S attended) offer the chance to make sure your kid is in an environment where academic achievement is the norm and it is socially acceptable to be a nerd.</p>

<p>The pay scale for private school teachers is about half that of the public schools, often with no benefits. Many of the private school teachers are good teachers who are willing to take less money for less stressful working conditions, but the salary differential limits the hiring pool to people who can’t get a job in the public schools, or who have a spouse with a good job with medical insurance. Of the two worst teachers S ever had, one was a burned-out, mean, unpopular old woman who had been at the private school for years and years, who kept saying she was going to retire, but then would show up again the next year. It was the other one’s first year at the public school and he was gone the next. On average, the public school teachers were better, and several of them had PhDs.</p>

<p>Like someone else mentioned, our public schools are being subject to serious budget cuts which I’m afraid is going to fairly quickly destroy a very good public school system. I’m glad S is out.</p>

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<p>Where you lack diversity in the selective private schools are with dealing with kids that have academic or other issues. If a kid can’t cut it in these schools, they are out the door. There are limited resources that the schools have for recalcitrant students. Yes, they will help those willing and able, but you don’t get the problems that the public schools that have to cater to all get. It also means that you and your kids do not have to deal with as many of those problems as the publics do too. Sybbie was right on the money about the public system having to take in those kids that Rice, a Catholic high school in Harlem with a great college matriculation rate, throws out, not to mention those it does not accept.</p>

<p>When my oldest was in public school in the midwest, the district lost a major law suit that required it to immediately start mainstreaming disabled kids into the classrooms. That first year was absolute with teachers who were not trained and many not willing to deal with these kids who needed extra work, and with class sizes at 30 kids, and issues like ESL and other minor LDs being addressed, the addition of a bunch of severely handicapped kids that were dropped into the system put everything to a stand still. To this day, I don’t see how it can be done to compare with a school that does not have that load to carry, especially with the class size the way it is. I don’t think they did those disabled kids any favor either. But this is an issue that simply does not arise at most private schools. Heck, you can’t even get your kid in there if s/he isn’t in the upper 25% of those taking the test. </p>

<p>Not all who have their kids in these schools can afford it. The schools tend to give scholarships and there also families that stretch and do some unwise things to pay the cost including, yes, loans. I met a family who was squeezed in a one bedroom apartment to be able to pay for the private school. What you get are parents who place education high enough on their priorities to make the effort for their kids to go these schools as it is not an automatic process. EVen those who are the poorest of the poor in these schools and are referred there by programs have some adult in their lives that has taken enough interest in them to put them in some program and get them introduced to the school, not to mention the application process for admissions and financial aid. That can make all the difference in the world. And you have to remember that these programs very much cherry pick the most talented kids and those with the most possibility to succeed. A major criticism of these programs is that it plucks the local talent out of the pool, lowering the standards there even further, though for NYC, I have less concern for such issues as there are specialty high schools for the gifted that do that as well.</p>

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<p>Privates can indeed be a better option than publics if you have the money for many reasons.</p>

<p>First, privates can be selective in addmission. Publics have to take everyone in that area. They may need to provide all kinds of supports and services that privates don’t have to provide.</p>

<p>Secondly, private schools are usually not as subject to severe budget cuts as the publics. Thus, you can have smaller class sizes and more offerings.</p>

<p>Thirdly, Privates, especially, the more well known one, attract a more affluent crowd. These kids come from money or can be well connected. Making friends can certainly help out in life.</p>

<p>Fourthly: if you have a kid with some learning issues or disabilities, there are private schools that will specficially cater to these kids. Very few public schools have strong programs for LD kids or for kids with other types of disabilities.</p>

<p>Fifthly:The main advantage of privates, however, hasn’t been stated on this thread: Colleges know that that generally kids who attend private schools have much more affluent parents. This translates to less scholarships needed for these kids than for that of private schools. Thus, you will find that the better known private schools have a much better track record of admission to the top ivys than that of most public schools.</p>

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<p>As someone else already mentioned, this conversation assumes that people have a choice between public and private. In our case, that is not true. Not only don’t we have private day schools near us, nor would we send our kids off to boarding schools, but we could never afford that anyway. We did not choose our public high school. It is the school where we live and that is where the kids went. I feel pretty certain that most people on this thread and in the Parent Forum would not send their kids to our high school based on my reading this forum for nine years. I’m not saying it is the best education or anything and I’m sure my kids would have really enjoyed the private schools some of your kids attended, my kids did all right. I also think there are broad generalizations being made here. </p>

<p>One generalization I am reading about is many posts talking about private schools better preparing kids for college (the topic of this thread) and also better at developing them as writers and thinkers. </p>

<p>In my view, our measly rural public school did a great job in this area. In terms of writing, it was emphasized starting in Kindergarten all the way up through high school. My kids wrote a GREAT deal in elementary school, including major papers and even scripts. This included essays and research papers. In freshman year of high school, in Honors English class, D1 was required to write a five page paper NIGHTLY (when D2 came along two years later, that was changed to a three page paper NIGHTLY). I also recall the take home marking period exams that required 15 pages of writing in TWO nights to complete it. This was on top of major papers they had to write. That was just that one class alone. I recall freshman social studies on the Honors level which was called Three Democracies. This course used primary sources (no text books) and required many analytical essays. That was just freshmen year. While we did not have AP classes in English or History, the Honors level classes for juniors and seniors were interdisciplinary in English/History and again used primary sources, not texts, and required numerous papers. My kids wrote many major papers, as well as essays during high school. I would consider both my kids to be accomplished writers, and my younger one is truly a gifted writer. </p>

<p>When they got to college…D1, who went to Brown…I recall in her first or second year there, in a class, the professor held her essay up as exemplary. Many of her classmates had gone to private prep schools. In grad school at MIT, in her program, she was considered the best writer (she was in architecture and said she was the most prepared with writing coming from Brown, than her grad peers, but again, had been well prepared in writing in high school too). For D2, I recall in freshman writing classes at NYU, the professor told her that her papers were the best of all her freshmen classes. Again, she went to college with kids who went to private prep schools and some top public schools. In our public rural K-12 system, my kids had to use critical thinking (no regurgitating facts or prepping for AP exams, but using real sources and having to write analytical essays) and had to do a ton of writing. They were totally prepared to succeed at very selective colleges, and excelled at their colleges (for example, D1 won the top award in her dept. at graduation at her college and D2 was selected as a Scholar upon entering her college and was given top scholarships there and the college, upon graduation nominated her for a national award that she won). </p>

<p>So, even at “crappy” high schools like ours, kids can be prepared to succeed at very selective colleges, and are also taught to think critically and to write a great deal before entering college. It happens.</p>

<p>PS, I forgot to mention that part of our state’s (VT) standardized testing system includes Writing Portfolios that students must present for evaluation to the state…I think this is in fourth and tenth grades.</p>

<p>One more PS (sorry!)…my younger D who is 22, was recently commissioned by a major theater to write a musical for them, despite the fact that she has only written one musical ever (the others who were commissioned by this theater have Tony awards and nominations for their musicals on Broadway) and did not study writing/composing in college. I want to thank our “rinky dink” PUBLIC rural elementary school who allowed my D to skip spelling classes in grades 3 and 4 and instead do an independent study supervised by the principal during that period and allowed her to write 90 page scripts.</p>

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<p>Those are YOUR kids, Soozie, and they are very talented. How do most of the kids in your public school do? I think if you put the older one in a top private high school, she would have been accepted to HPY, and I think if a number of kids in your public were given the opportunity to go to a top private, their worlds would have been expanded. I think these top privates tend to give the most benefit to those who have the biggest gaps as kids like yours really don’t have much higher to go. In the case of my kids, the would have been fair to middling at your public school just as they were at a top private, but the difference is that they learned a lot more at that top private with the small classes, intensive workload, high standards, and teachers right on top of them. That’s why I moved them there and paid the differential. If my kids were like yours, I don’t think I would have invested in a private school and in fact, the older one could have done very well at your state school or any university for that matter that offered advanced courses.</p>

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<p>Sooz, your rural public schools clearly are not at the abysmal level of many urban public schools that many posters here are using as references. The GC’s in my city’s public HS spend most of their time on social issues, not educational issues. Getting a teen mother signed up for food stamps; testifying at custody hearings; providing background information to law enforcement on a kid who has been convicted but not yet sentenced for a violent crime; following up on social worker visits to families in crises, etc. English teachers are neither assigning nor reading 5 page papers on a nightly basis-- a very high percentage of the kids come from homes where English isn’t spoken, and many are recent immigrants.</p>

<p>I know your town has economic diversity-- which is great- but many of us live in places where the high schools have metal detectors (for guns) and police dogs (for everything else) at the entrances.</p>

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<p>Not sure if this is mentioned anywhere in the previous 5 pages of posts, but learning Latin and/or Greek in high school is a great prep for college. Latin and Greek are offered in HSs usually only in private HSs. My D went to a NYC private high school as I did, the same in fact. We both had Latin and Greek. My D just finished her first year in a “top” LAC and found, as I did when I went to college (a top tier), that having studied Latin and Greek helped us with our grammar, not only in English writing, but in other languages. Although my D suffered a bit in HS with Latin and Greek, she now says (surprisingly) that it really helped her in her college studies. Other students at her LAC did not have Latin or Greek and they have had incredible problems with grammar in their foreign language courses. It’s not just learning the Latin and Greek languages and the grammar that helps, it’s also learning how to think in a more organized way that you need to do to be able to handle Latin and Greek well. Also, her private HS forced her to write many many papers of all kinds, and long ones too. Now doing so is easy for her in college. Learning Latin and Greek also helped her write better papers in English. Also in her private HS she had lots of reading for her courses. No too in college, and its a snap for her. She definitely feels that she was better prepared than many of her college classmates.</p>

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<p>cptofthehouse:
I have no doubt my kids would have enjoyed private high schools. But I’m just saying that they did have intense workloads in the Honors classes at our HS and did have to meet high standards. If you are a good student you can do fine coming from any high school. I have heard that this year, from our unknown rural public, that two kids are going to Harvard, one to Yale and two to MIT. This is not common but I’m just saying that they will be well prepared. I know that one of the kids who got into MIT also got into Brown. </p>

<p>And while our HS is nothing to boast about, there are some advantages…my kids mixed with kids from a wide socio-economic background. They also had small class sizes. They could participate in ECs of their choosing for the most part without many cuts. There was not a competitive atmosphere and that was nice.</p>

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<p>blossom, I totally agree that some inner city publics are abysmal. But some people on this thread live in suburbia and even affluent towns and still use private schools (not criticizing this at all but just saying as a fact). </p>

<p>By the way, while my rural town is nothing like the inner city, GCs also must deal with many issues that face low income children. Issues like families in crisis definitely exist here in rural areas.</p>