<p>I don't think the size of the class matters if the students are attentive and the teacher is good. The magnet schools and AP classes tend to attract the achieving kids.
My S's elem school (private) had 15 kids per class, but the few disruptive ones made learning harder than when he entered HS with more selective kids in the advanced classes. When I observed some regular classes, I was taken back by how rude some students were to the teacher, how they walked around the room, etc.</p>
<p>Regardless of money, anyone with merit can go to Bronx Science which is certianly up to par with any elite prep school.</p>
<p>by the city? are u guys referring to all the boroughs? or just manhattan?</p>
<p>The City of New York includes all of the boroughs.</p>
<p>I have seen Horace Mann school many times and it is located in a very wealthy section of the bronx in a residential area. It's right down the road from Manhattan College.</p>
<p>But besides having nice fields, the school doesn't look that nice. Also if you go down the road a little the area is not very good. You are a little over a mile from the bronx projects.</p>
<p>Don't understand where the $30,000 goes. I wouldn't send my child there.</p>
<p>My school is up to about $29-something. As someone who has been to a magnet public school, catholic school and struggling public school, I KNOW that private schools have an enormous advantage. I used to get straight As in public school w/o ever being challenged... now I am challenged EVERY DAY. The college counseling system is also top-tier. They have close relas with college admissions officers. I mean, c'mon... my french class consisted of 3 ppl in ninth grade. Many of the teachers will take an immense amount of time working out of class with you and truly love teaching. They also have masters, etc in their fields. You have hundreds of options: clubs, languages, class choices, APs, sports, publications, etc.</p>
<p>however- not that I am slamming private schools, but public schools can also have a great program.
My D inner city high school sends lots of kids to Ivys and comparable schools every year-more than some of the suburban schools as far as I can tell.
Lots of politics in the public school system though- when they were in private school, I didn't have to worry about how the school was run, I jsut sent my money in , and volunteered in and out of the classroom, but didn't have 1/2 as many meetings as I do now.</p>
<p>And all these schools have AMAZING financial aid programs. TRUST ME. lol</p>
<p>I understand paying several grand for private high school,( i go to phillips exeter), or heck, even middle school.</p>
<p>BUT Pre-school? WOW</p>
<p>some parents have to chill out, especially those who try to control their children or live vicariously through them.</p>
<p>'Lastly, I seriously doubt that most families who stretch their budgets and forego the luxurious trappings of middle class wealth to send their kids to an expensive private school are doing this with an ulterior motive of social ... climbing."</p>
<p>Maybe not most, but, at least in NYC, some do--and far more use them to get business. Some NYCers use private schools the way people in affluent suburbia use country clubs and golf clubs---for networking. There are stock brokers, insurance agents, interior designers, attorneys, and many others who earn far more than their kid's tuition each year in business derived from other parents whose kids attend the same schools and/or whom they met through the private school "network". </p>
<p>And some do do it for social climbing. (Ever read "Bonfire of the Vanities"? )</p>
<p>I do agree with you that the difference in the quality of education in grades 1-12 isn't wiped out just because two kids end up at the same college. (I preach all the time on the law board that there's a difference in the quality of colleges and it isn't wiped out by the fact that you may end up at the same law school.) But NYC is rather unique in that it does have some extraordinary public schools, especially high schools. </p>
<p>In my --obviously--very biased opinion, none of the private schools comes close to matching the diversity of the student body at Hunter, Stuy, Townsend Harris, or Bx Science. In fact, I don't think any college in the US comes close to them in terms of socioeconomic diversity. </p>
<p>Now, I'm sure that there are parents whose kids could get into Stuy or Hunter or Townsend Harris who think that the classes are too big and thus choose to send their sons and daughters to schools that cost $30,000 a year, but quite seriously, I think they are in the minority. </p>
<p>The majority who make that choice do it for reasons other than the quality of the education. Not all of those reasons are invalid--one of my neighbors made the choice so her son could play lacrosse, a sport not offered by any of the NYC public high schools. He went on to Princeton as a recruited athlete. </p>
<p>So, while I certainly think parents have a perfect right to spend $30,000 a year as they see fit, I'm not buying the argument that they do so primarily because they think the quality of education at Horace Mann or Dalton is better than the quality of education at Hunter, Stuy, etc.</p>
<p>"And some do do it for social climbing. (Ever read "Bonfire of the Vanities"? )"</p>
<p>Yep, and have you ever read "Lost in the Meritocracy" by Walter Kirn, which was published in The Atlantic Monthly's January/February 2005 issue. </p>
<p>I guess both of us we'll keep a different set of opinions, based on some facts and lot of ... speculation.</p>
<p>Relatives of mine live in a highly sought after Long Island public school district. Often when $1 million plus town homes open up in their particular community they will be purchased by parents wanting to send their kids to the local high school, ...who never move in. They simply want the address. The school is initiating a policy of visiting the homes of new students to see if anyone actually lives there! $30,000+ doesn't sound so much after one hears about this.</p>
<p>In Boston, you would not use the public schools. Those who have not trod in these shoes should not criticize. As far as the expenditure for preK and K, if you had no option of full day K, and you were a single parent working full time, what would you do????????? It's not about living vicariously through your children AT ALL.
Again, all I can say is, those who do not live in these places cannot judge.</p>
<p>spikemom, I sort of agree. Boston Latin is by far one of the best high schools. Other places however, do have a decent representation of "Boston Public" (tv show)</p>
<p>DS was accepted to Boston Latin. I could not bring myself to send him there.</p>
<p>so I am wondering- what is wrong exactly with Bostons public schools- it is a city that is sometimes compared to Seattle- in cost of living etc, although Boston had forced busing in the 70s ( which the president of Ds college was quite involved with), and Seattle had voluntary busing.</p>
<p>I send my D to an inner city school by choice- although I grew up in the suburbs and her sister attended private K-12. I realize that Seattle does'nt have "slums" and the "inner city" just means that don't walk down that street because you might get assaulted even though it is broad daylight and there are people around and you are headed back to school after lunch.
Still it is where my mother attended high school , and it is one of the best high schools in the city.public or private.
or so I tell myself :)</p>
<p>( now I don't know the area- but we have aquaintances who live in Lexington and just rave on and on about the public schools- that couldn't be too far to commute since they work at MIT- but I am also wondering about those who make the choice to live in a city and use private schools or to live in a burb and go public-
we chose the city first- before we really looked at the schools and we would ahve been happy if she had gotten into the few public schools we really liked, but she didn't , so we went private
We much prefered that route to living in Bellevue as noted on another thread, and now we are used enough to the city that we have been sending our 2nd daughter to public school for this will be her 8th year.....
* Ofcourse if I had known that the public testing mania was going to eat up so much class time and school resources we would have just stayed private, but I do love that she has friends from Somalia and Senegal and Iran, ( not to mention Japan and even Texas)*</p>
<p>Why didn't you allow him to go? BLS is a great competitive school and not as cutthroat as some of the other elites.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Latin_School%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Latin_School</a>
I agree Boston Latin sounds fabulous if a little large-
I like public schools, our kids have to live in the world,and my younger D has had experiences that I couldn't have predicted, but that I value.
( Boston English doesn't sound too bad either)</p>
<p>harmon25: </p>
<p>I went to school in that area myself, and at least at that time I recall no ill effects from the greater environment removed from Horace Mann. It's immediate environment is fine. In fact it has a larger campus, in nicer surroundings, then most of these other schools that are getting that tuition.</p>
<p>IMO the parents aren't paying so much for the physical appeareance of the buildings; they are paying for what goes on inside the buildings.</p>
<p>The best school I ever sent my kids to was a private school in Brooklyn. Physically it was a run-down dump; just two or three individual, old buildings in Brooklyn Heights. But what my kids experienced and learned there was wonderful.</p>
<p>Based on this I believe that the private schools really can be "better" for a kid who matches what they've got to offer. </p>
<p>However my daughter is now having a great experience in a suburban NYC public school, and this is not a bad alternative if someone (like me) can't swing these huge tuition bills.</p>
<p>The rub is that buying a house in those NYC suburbs noted for good school systems now will not be too easy on the pocketbook either.</p>
<p>Boston public schools are shamefully bad given the resources in the area. It is an almost entirely minority school system. Kids are bused all over the place for some irrational balancing that can never be achieved given the demographics now existing in Boston. It's hard to imagine putting a 4 or 5 year old on a long bus ride across the city to a crappy school - I couldn't do it. Schools seem to be run for the convenience of the unions. Phyical plants are bad, lack of books and materials, not much learning going on, and real safety issues at school and going back and forth. At the time my son was getting ready to start school, no all day kindergarten and no afterschool programs, meaning I would be scrambling in the middle of the day every day. White kids in Boston go to parochial and private schools. Talented minority kids are in the METCO program (they are bused to good suburban schools like Lexington). There are some public charter schools that are OK, not great, that have opened in the last few years.The kids in the public schools are unfortunately the ones whose parents are not motivated enough to send them somewhere better. (I know this is a huge generalization, no flames). ALso, there are programs such as Steppingstone that identify talented minority kids and groom them for private school, where they go on scholarship. DS's girlfriend is a Steppingstone student at his private school, she has been accepted to Wellesley. Private schools here are diverse and give decent financial aid to a lot of kids.
BLS is huge, the drop out rate is outrageous, it is a sink or swim school. They actually tell you to look to the left, look to the right, two of you won't be here in 6 years - nice. No extracurriculars or sports in middle school, unless the kid makes a varsity team.(When I asked about this at an accepted students reception, Headmaster told me they don't have activities for them because they have so much homework, they don't want them to be distracted) Kids at Boston Latin who go to Harvard are talented minorities cherrypicked by Harvard. The list of colleges where BLS students go is not impressive - no other Ivies or LAC's, mostly UMass.(You can look at that list online if you want) Many kids are really unhappy there, and end up transferring to private schools (those who have the reosurces) DS graduated in a class of 16 from a private elementary school, about 9 of those kids went to BLS for 7th grade, most are now in private school.
Boston English, by the way, is not an exam school, it is a high school where kids go who don't get into exam schools. Not a place you would ever consider.
So that's my rambling scoop on Bosotn public schols. Suburban public here are some of the best in the country, but as a single parent, the house I bought (for $85,000 mind you)was in the city and I have always loved living in the city. I would have been unhappy in the suburbs and couldn't have afforded it anyway. My son is a real city, kid, riding the subway since 6th grade, using the Boston Public Library, and has a diversity of friends he never would have had in Newton, Lexington etc.</p>