@labegg A few months back, there was a long thread revolving around what you are asking. I’ve never read it but it might be interesting to you vs. turning this thread into a similar discussion. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-parents/1766380-why-do-you-send-your-kids-to-boarding-school.html#latest
What is a D16? Not your 16th child I assume?
I believe that usually refers to graduation year… Class of 2016
In my other community, number following dc/dd/ds is usually age of the child when it is 5~19, and order of the child when it is 1~4.
@laenen,
The faculty:student ratios at Weston and Lexington HSs are very low (11.5:1 and 12.4:1). The ratios at Middlesex and Concord Academy (the closest BS’s in terms of geography) are substantially lower, 4:1 and 1:6.
As @doschicos pointed out, although they have excellent public schools, Weston and Lexington are very expensive towns. A family could sell a house in Weston at the median housing price and buy another median priced home in Des Moines and have enough cash left over to send three kids to boarding schools for 4 years, then an expensive private college for 4 years as well!
I live in a town outside Boston with strong public schools. I would have no worries sending my kids to our HS and I know the school has an excellent record of college admissions, but I know there are things my kids would have missed out on. For instance, I have a kid who loves her sport but wouldn’t have made the HS team past freshman year. At her BS she’ll be able to play that sport for 4 years in addition to playing 2 more sports in the other season. She can join the dance troupe, act in the play, sing in the chorus, join the photography club, all without having to be a specialist.
My youngest is in the middle of exams. This week the teachers stayed late to hold evening exam prep sessions. Kids could find any of their teachers on campus and since the faculty:student ratio is so low anyone who needed one on one attention got it. My kid’s a day student, but last night she stayed to eat dinner, met with two teachers, and attended a group Q&A session and still arrived home in time to get a good night’s sleep.
I do agree that the best of the Boston area day schools offer the same advantages as the best BS’s and that going private is not necessary to get a stellar education in the Boston area. We’re lucky to have a wide range of choices not available in many areas of the country.
Best high schools at my town (although I can’t afford to move in to the district anyway) may provide excellent education at the cost of unhappiness that I don’t want my child to endure, or witness other students around her enduring.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-best-brightest-and-saddest.html
Labegg,
I think my post must have been unclear. I was just saying that I doubt anyone thinks ill of those who DO NOT chose BS… that I disagree with the five things you listed under what others think of parents who ARE NOT interested in boarding school, How could we think people who aren’t interested in boarding school are stupid or naive, when the vast majority of people don’t even think about BS? DS and PS is the norm, BS is the choice that people are curious about.
Edited to add part of you post i missed:
“Are you telling me that boarding school families are boarding for purely altruistic reasons?” - Labegg
Hmm,not sure where that came from? I don’t follow that logic.
And in re: “No one willing to admit that one of the important factors in choosing boarding school is because they wanted their child to be with a certain socio/economic element” - Labegg
I don’t think that rings true, either, for many families. Keep in mind many are coming from private DS or exclusive school districts (probably a lot of the full pay are from one or the other). Our DC’s private DS has close to zero minorities and very very little economic diversity (faculty kids is about it). BS would provide a broader and more diverse socio-economic element by far. But I don’t think that was what you were implying.
Sculptor,
It is so hard for schools to strike the right balance. Sad.
@SculptorDad , I remember reading that article last year. So, so sad.
@6teenSearch I agree with the diversity point. Our suburburban private was VERY non-diverse. On socioeconomic, racial, gender, even religious lines. At his BS, he is in a triple with a kid from rural southern Mexico and a kid from Africa. His friends are from all over the world, male and female, from different backgrounds and experiences and with a wide variety of perspectives. This exposure, in our minds, is invaluable.
@6teenSearch & @hellomaisy Definitely agree with that point! We live in a fairly small town. We have a few Hispanic families in town, no Asian families, no African-American families, and everyone either belongs to a Christian or Catholic church. My child loves visiting her grandparents that I’ve in a large city and welcomes the change for the racially and cuturally diverse population. BS will definitely be a welcome change to her daily life!
@16teensearch - lol, I appreciate your clarification. I don’t think I am being completely clear either.
My main point all along has been that BS parents don’t owe anyone an explanatioin of their decision. I am sure you all face lots of weird/negative comments and it is tiring and frustrating to have to be on guard and explain your personal decisions regarding. If you are going to give an explanation, be honest and truthful.
BS parents are not alone and for every questioning negative comment you receive, honestly a DS, PS or LPS parent faces similar questioning of their parenting decisions for any number or reasons. If you are going to do something that is not normative chances are you are going to face more than your fair share of comments, negative or positive.
I was not trying to derail the thread. Explaining my thinking process about BS was meant to help you understand where parents of non BS kids might be coming from and why comments could be negative (not that I am a representative for the non BS community, just one point of view). You do you and I will go back to LPS land and do me. Best wishes on your kiddo’s education journey. 
I observe that many of the parents I know that send their kids to private/boarding school think that some magic will rub off on them and they will be transported to another socioeconomic level through osmosis. Yes the education available at many of the schools discussed here are terrific but they are no more terrific than most of the very top public and test in schools. Part of the reason they are no better than the top publics, some of which are test in, is because those schools are test in. It is literally a test. (Stuyvesant, Hunter, NEST, TJefferson, Boston Latin etc). There is no full pay verses financial aid issues, no hooks simply just a test and (sometimes) grades. Likewise, in Scarsdale, Rye, Weston, McLean etc there are very very few minorities of the free lunch variety. But I stray off topic. I think the hostility/resentment/what’s wrong with our school mentality, judgement is all about jealousy. That being said I do not for one second believe that MOST people send their kids to BS for purely educational reasons. Keep in mind that 50% or more are full pay. Those people probably have good public or local private alternatives. I think it draws on socioeconomic lines as to the why. As for the negative reactions, it would follow that they would mostly be coming from similar socioeconomic status people and or vocal public school advocates (with same logic applying). No coffee yet so excuse the serpentine nature of this tangle of words!
@Center: I think there is some truth in what you say. (BTW: I haven’t had any coffee either, so I should probably keep my hands off the keyboard, especially after blasting a newb yesterday when I should have just gone to bed.) But anyway, my pre-coffee response is that I’ve often wondered about people choosing BS who have great public options. Even now that we’ve had the full experience and kiddo has graduated, I wish like heck we’d had better options at home because we certainly wouldn’t have gone this route otherwise. And we live in a high SES area with the “best” schools. However, in our state, you only have to slide down the list to the sixth-ranked school until the college-readiness metric is only 50%. And the top two schools (jokes on the USNWR list) get their national rating because–wait for it–they’ve gamed the rankings with graduating classes below 30 students who all pass a few APs and go to college. If 100% of your graduating class passes at least one AP with a 3 or better and 100% go to college, USNWR will put you at the top of their list. I don’t give .02 for that magazine and it’s outrageous rankings. But I digress.
I don’t think any of our neighbors were jealous exactly. Just confused. They point to all of the A+ schools in our area, but that grade is assigned by the state based on no-child-left behind mandated testing. The bar is so low on that one that our son (and most others) never got a wrong answer on that test every year he took it. The average SAT score at our highest ranked public is under 1700. It doesn’t matter to our neighbors because all (ALL) of their “high-performing” kids get the huge grade-based tuition discount from our take-all-comers state U and are happy with that. Don’t get me started. We chose BS solely for the quality of the education. He got a lot more out of it than that, but that’s gravy.
What I’m getting now are comments along the lines of, “All that money for BS and he’s in the military? What happened? Did the money run out?”
You can never win. Smile and nod.
@ChoatieMom . I have the same frustrations and skepticisms about the way public schools are assessed. Conversely, did you know that schools can be docked points and suffer in the rankings because they are not diverse enough? Social engineering police. By the way more kids should go into the military and I would be thrilled if this one were to follow the same path as yours. Too few kids understand the sacrifice that goes into our much taken for granted freedoms. On top of that a great education…
Choatie mom, preach it!
Your demo is my demo.
This has been a very interesting read…My two cents…@Center, I agree with your point (to a degree). We live in a very highly educated area (including have a two “top” BS and yes, and an Ivy league school). The LPS are very good for those at the very top of the class (top 20 students/out of 400), but has other issues as it relates to those not at the top. We also have a number of very, very good private schools. DH went to top BS. Our reasons (and we get a lot of flack – mostly from people from who we did not ask their opinion :-)) for sending are not purely educational, as I cannot honestly say that I think DC would not get a great education locally (I think years ago, certainly when DH went to BS, there was a significant gap between what you could get educationally at home (public and private) versus what BS could provide. The gap, in my opinion, in certain areas, has closed significantly, if it truly exists at all – purely from an educational standpoint.). We are sending DC to BS so that he can continue develop his own voice in an independent way that since we only have one (and are probably guilty of assisting/helping/intervening too much) will simply not happen in the same way here at home. DC is incredibly independent and we knew from sixth grade, BS would be the best option for him. This is the reason he did not want to apply to the two very highly ranked BS in our area. Both schools have a significant day population and are very popular locally, so DC thought (if admitted), he would run into quite a few kids DC already knows. The other reason is that we have tried over the years to travel and expose DC to different people and experiences and we think BS can provide him with a more fuller experience along those lines than our local community, which is not very diverse. DC’s travels have opened his mind (which we had hoped) and he is chomping at the bit to leave our local area and explore new horizons! There is also a bit of tradition in that DH credits BS with shaping and helping him to become the person he has and we hope BS can have the same impact for our DC. Long answer, but in short, it’s not just for educational reasons, but for the other non-tangible experiences that BS can provide.
“Chomping at the bit” is a phrase we have used as well. Heck if DC could get a challenging job and an apartment at 14, they might have chosen that!
Meanwhile our other kids are either 1) rolling in hay or 2) dangerously close to a threat of the glue factory. JK but in any event not particularly keen on BS.
ChoatieMom, another example of commenters who are either totally uninformed or ill intentioned. People have lost sight of honor. Not to mention to equate going to Westpoint with joining the military is like saying Janet Yellen works in a bank.
@sandstorm2 . We are on the same page exactly. We are sending not for education (though certainly will be superb) but for diversity (we are in a very homogenous area) and most of all, independence. Also to not be the only new kid. Just ready for it.
The right balance of academic rigor and social development opportunities is supposed to be what every parent is looking to find for their high schoolers, some being more aware than others. On the academic side, a certain degree of “cutthroatness” becomes inevitable in any type of academic powerhouse, be it a super competitive PS, a well known day school or an Exeter/Andover. Many parents who have smart and driven students and who believe peer competition can contribute to a stimulating learning environment don’t try to avoid academic powerhouses. However, it’s what’s left out of the academics that sometimes make the top PS and top BS apples and oranges. The intentionally built diversity in BS is not only providing a testing ground for students to understand and learn from each other but also potentially re-defining winners - that is, a student body constituted of members with different strengths, there can be many winners other than valedictorians. This is alleviating, more or less, the narrow focus of academics, making other aspects of school life more meaningful and enjoyable. Some say that this is a “socially engineered” environment and is not the “real world”. Well, the first part of this statement may be true but the second is not necessarily. In the work environment, for example, with the exception a few highly specialized fields, it’s not the “valedictorian” but the ones with well developed intelligence and social skills who win.
With all the above said, it’s also true that “school is what you make of it”. Students in the same school can have vastly different experience because some are more prepared and dis-positioned to take advantage of what a school provides while others may need a different type of environment to flourish. So, advice to parents who are considering different school options - If you have the money to pay for BS, consider if your kid can actually be a super star in your top PS and if that’s more of your/their “cup of tea”. If so, you’d be better off buying a house in that school district, which in itself would be a better investment. Or, if your kid will gain more in a BS and better yet would be qualified for FA, why would you want to stretch your resource and stay in that shabby little apartment in the best school district only to find your kid is miserable in that “best school”? Then, another factor is parental involvement. No matter where you kid is at, you are still their rock and your values and directions will have bigger impact than you’d think.
@6teenSearch I laughed out loud at your comment about the apartment! We say the same thing.