<p>There aren’t many great public schools, unfortunately. The infrastructure is falling apart, many are overcrowded, some require extreme commutes. But it’s not for lack of funding. The schools are funded here, but we could argue forever about waste and screwed up priorities.</p>
<p>We also have a very diverse student population, which makes things tough. We have many schools that operate primarily in spanish, many in Mandarin, some in various other languages. My daughter teaches in a school with a huge community of Liberian immigrants. They have special circumstances and needs because they escaped from a violent civil war in which the common method of control was to whack off the forearms of innocent people with machetes. I totally admire and respect the work done in that school, but I wouldn’t want my son there because the needs of the kids there are so different than his that it would hold him back markedly, but the progress made by the students in that school is amazing when you measure where they are versus where they came from. It’s tough, it really is. On paper, if those students aren’t achieving by the standard measures, one would think the school a failure, but that’s not the right way to look at it. That particular school building (in my borough the schools cover a vast geographic area) encompasses the poor kids I mentioned who came to the US with nothing, and several enclaves of homes in the multi-million dollar range. The people in those enclaves simply don’t send their kids to the zoned public school. They either choose private or magnet and who can really blame them?</p>
<p>I guess what irks me about this is that access to great education shouldn’t be reserved for the ultra rich or those lucky enough to win spots in good schools.</p>
It’s not a question of access. Most teachers are amazing and at the middle and high school levels in NY, the teachers have to have a degree in their subject, not education. There is access for almost every one (I won’t go out on a limb and speak for every person in NYC), but having access doesn’t mean a particular student or group of students can take advantage of that access and achieve success by the measure most of us would like. If a teacher has a class of students, most of whom have moms who were in their teens when they were born, no fathers in the picture, and no jobs, the measure of success might better be that the kids come to school most days, get a nutritious lunch and are immunized. If we aren’t willing to take kids out of failing homes, and we aren’t, then we can’t expect schools to create academic success out of the air. In NYC, breakfast and lunch are available all year long to anyone who needs it. The kids can be immunized, receive vision, hearing and dental screenings, as well as monitoring of their weight and fitness. Many schools are open from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm and have to do so much physical care of kids that education is incidental.</p>
<p>mspearl, reading the thread points out that many of the expensive private schools offer financial aid and that they do seek out both socio-economic diversity and ethnic diversity. </p>
<p>There is a letter in response in the NY Times Sunday paper from Head of Trustees of Riverdale Country School, which reports of that of every $1 of tuition .15 goes to scholarships. And that the true cost is about 10% higher than tuition, made up by fund raising and donations.<br>
I do not envy parents trying to navigate this system for their children. If one knew which HS your kindergartner would be placed into, you could perhaps wisely choose, navigate and support the public school system k -12; when you have no knowledge of which HS may grant admission and little control, it is easily conceivable that parents choose to hedge bets and start the kids in private school to ensure at least one viable option at HS time, expensive as that may be. Many of these middle school private school kids do in fact take the exams for the selective public schools and go through the match process at the public HS. Some kids go through the whole match process and arent even matched at all. How else can a family try to prepare for such outcomes? It is not that the parents are against “public schools” blanketly. </p>
<p>My H commutes over an hour a day into Manhattan. We have talked about moving, but until freshman S graduates HS it seems foolish to even try.</p>
<p>I agree that the wealthy can spend their money any way they like. However, I don’t for one minute believe most are philanthropic generally without a reason. They become wealthy because of untaxed inherited wealth or by being ruthless and by cronyism. </p>
<p>There was an article in my local paper recently about someone who had donated 1 million dollars to a local cause and was given an honorary position at another institution. However, the article didn’t say that the honorary position came with a salary of $150,000.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the donation is a huge tax write off and somebody more deserving could have had the $150K salary.</p>
I disagree, but I work for top law firms and see how many multi-millionaire lawyers started out living in trailer parks. Not as many as started out rich, but more than you might think. The legal community in New York is also incredibly generous with both time and money. Not everyone who is wealthy is evil and selfish. Some are. Not all. And not all poor people are generous and selfless.</p>
<p>…some people do have better access to education. It is called having stability…which many people living close to or in poverty do not possess. But let’s blame the poor. And take their kids away from them. </p>
<p>I was a teenage mom. My husband was 17 when our daughter was born. I used Medicaid and pell grants. I was exceedingly poor. But we were able to go to school. Education saved us. My daughters are both wonderful students and my senior just received a full tuition scholarship to college. Parts of this thread make me want to cry.</p>
<p>Have you read the entire thread? Because I really have no idea why you are so outraged. The posters are discussing options for NYC residents when it comes to school - options for poor and wealthy alike (BTW, I think the thread overall is extremely interesting). You are really overreacting.</p>
She is outraged because the extremes of poverty and diversity are very unfamiliar to many people. Sometimes people don’t understand that an excellent education isn’t nearly as much of a victory as feeding hungry kids and immunizing them when they otherwise wouldn’t be actually is. That’s what happens in the NYC public schools and we are proud of that. In the time allotted, sometimes that’s the best that can happen when the kids are then sent home to neglect and dysfunction. The education fairies don’t stop here, unfortunately.</p>
<p>I used to be an education major, at Hunter/CUNY. Only for 3 semesters, I decided I just didn’t have the calling (and to try to live on that money and do that very hard work, you need to love what you do). </p>
<p>But I did field-teach a few days a week for two of those semesters in East Harlem. One semester pre-K, and other semester 5th grade.</p>
<p>It was tough. In the pre-K, a **lot **of kids couldn’t speak English. </p>
<p>In the 5th, we spent a lot of time dealing with one girl who constantly acted out - and by acted out I mean yelled at the teacher and at me, threw chairs, knocked over desks etc., who my mentor teacher told me was the daughter of a crack addict and basically on her own when not in school.</p>
<p>It was hard to get the material taught but these teachers were dedicated heroes and I believe most of these kids got great educations, at least from what I observed.</p>
<p>Again, this was in the late 80’s, so things may have changed this much (which is odd to me, as real estate prices are much higher and the crime rate much lower now compared to then…in the 70’s the city almost went bankrupt for pete’s sake). But I certainly wouldn’t have considered it a job well done,as a teacher, to only feed and immunize my kids.</p>
<p>In the 5th, we spent a lot of time dealing with one girl who constantly acted out - and by acted out I mean yelled at the teacher and at me, threw chairs, knocked over desks etc.It was hard to get the material taught but these teachers were dedicated heroes and I believe most of these kids got great educations, at least from what I observed. —
the wonder with the above comment is not that most of those kids got great education, its that any one of those students got any education.
The poverty that is around in the past 2/3 yrs is reaching the early 80’s levels.</p>
I think it depends on the population we’re talking about. I was pretty specific about my daughter’s class which is comprised almost exclusively of refugees from the Liberian civil war. Many of the parents are missing limbs, their immigration status is a constant source of drama, and obtaining and learning to use prostheses is a very large matter in the families. For that particular group, getting the kids fed, immunized (it’s not for nothing that measles and pertussis are making a huge comeback here) and learning basic tasks of assimilation is a huge task and each is important to the kids’ ability to learn. In a perfect world, public school teachers wouldn’t be responsible for this, but we don’t live in a perfect world and if the teachers don’t do it for the specific kids in need, then no one will do it and there is no chance of them learning, succeeding and living happy lives.</p>
<p>She also has a class of honors kids who do serious academic tasks and are totally at or above grade level. But they generally have the basics covered at home, which the students who aren’t “succeeding” academically do not. </p>
<p>^^^^Where are your philanthropists? Rebuilding the landscaping at the Met. Not taking care of the poor, which would really be a philanthropic endeavor.</p>
Paying for their parents’ prosthetic arms. In the literal, financial, actual sense. That’s what happens in that school. Also providing the kids with school supplies, backpacks, clothing. That particular school is kept afloat because of private donations because many of the kids have NOTHING. So don’t be so quick to snark.</p>
<p>mspearl,
I just want to step in here and add that $39,000 in NYC does not go anywhere near as far as it would where you live in OH. There is a HUGE COL difference.
I suspect a private nursery in your area at the top end would run more like 1/3 or 1/4???And I expect that in your area the number spent per student at your BEST PS is nowhere near the $19k avg at NYC publics, and believe me, and the $19k does not go very far in NYC, certainly nowhere near as far as it does in your area.
This is comparing apples and oranges. Not quality. Or a good way to find excess.
Also, believe it or not, the $39K figure probably does NOT cover the total cost of that student’s education, as likely it covers part of the cost of the financial aid these type of schools provide to some students, and these private schools rely, depend on fund-raising and maybe an endowment (fund set aside after fundraising) to cover their annual costs.</p>
<p>If you compare the price per sq ft of real estate for your area and NYC (where there is no land in addition to the home), you will get an idea of how expensive things are generally in comparison to each other. The best way is to also include the local real estate and sales taxes. </p>
<p>Your story is hard with an incredible and heartwarming ending, and you have not had it easy for sure. Good for you for giving it our all and dealing with so much adversity. You are a great role-model.
Just understand that adversity comes in many different forms. And it is hard to understand how things work in different places.</p>
<p>“Where are your philanthropists? Rebuilding the landscaping at the Met. Not taking care of the poor, which would really be a philanthropic endeavor.”</p>
<p>My best friend is a successful Wall Street banker who spends all his free time in the Bronx personally helping homeless people (ie, bringing donated blankets, helping them neuter their pets, paying tickets so they won’t be arrested if they want to spend the night in a city shelter), and working with an organization that helps children living in poverty, dealing with the children themselves, not just funding it. (in case you are imagining that he is doing this as part of a church, he’s not. He’s an atheist)</p>
<p>People should really stop making sweeping generalizations about classes of people, like all rich people all selfish, all people who send their kids to private schools are social climbers, etc. this kind of talk just muddies the conversation and shows our inability to conduct a nuanced conversation.</p>
<p>On another note, i just checked the price of pre/k and k tuition for my kids NYC private school (a school on the list of fancy NYC privates linked to earlier), and it’s $31k, not $39 k. Okay, it is still major money, but almost 25 percent less than the headline. (as I said earlier, it was $15 k when my kid was in kindergarten, who is now in 8th grade.)</p>
<p>zooser, I understand. When the task includes getting kids up to a baseline level of health, teaching them a new language, correcting poor nutrition, dealing with the severe emotional trauma kids experience in a war…it is a real challenge to also teach the 3Rs. </p>
<p>I wish I had ideas. </p>
<p>I have helped teachers in my kids’ decidedly middle/upper middle class schools - we’re small village not too far from a city, not a suburb but close (probably an hour from mspearl, actually) - and there was a kid in my D’s K class that acted out to some degree like the girl I mentioned in Harlem. Less the chair throwing. That was a tough year and the teacher would use parent volunteers to cover what she couldn’t in dealing with him. But he was sent to the principal’s office when he got out of hand and eventually transferred. I wonder now if it was a school for kids with severe behavioral issues or if they simply moved, but he wasn’t around the next year. </p>
<p>My kids’ classes have also had teacher’s aides assigned to one student, one for example who was diabetic and needed to be supervised for that. I used to love when my D was in her class because they got two teachers, really, as the little girl was very good at taking care of her own tests, etc.</p>
<p>I can’t help but think my NYC class could have used a teacher’s aide. Or lots of parents with the time to volunteer. But neither were available.</p>
The thing that my daughter and other teachers of this specific population would tell you is that when the kids get stabilized, they soar academically because there is such a culture of education and achievement. Which is a great thing. The kids at the bottom in that school don’t stay there for very long. I’ve heard that is true of a lot of recent African immigrants, but I have no actual data for that.</p>
<p>My son was in a class for two years with a kid who was diabetic and had a para. She was like a whole other teacher and, since the kids were together for two years, she had a huge impact on them. God bless her.</p>
<p>There are often aides or paras in my daughter’s classes, but it depends on the particular needs. They also have student teachers and interns (of which my daughter was one for two years) who are paid a very nice salary by, you guessed it, private donations. Those interns are only eligible to work and be paid at low-achieving and high-poverty schools. I know the details of that program because my daughter did it. It provides a number of interns (who all have to have degrees or be close to degrees in specific subject areas) who provide significant assistance to the teachers and students.</p>