<p>It may be hard to get A grades, but that could either be due to high standards (good) or poor instruction (bad). What is really of interest is how well graduates do in post-secondary education.</p>
<p>Lack of counseling interest in college may result in students not being able to find suitable colleges with sufficient financial aid. It may also be a symptom of lack of caring about maintaining academic standards (at least with respect to college preparation).</p>
<p>Two of the comments on this thread are out of touch – or referring to the exception by ignoring the reality.</p>
<p>“But on the other hand, I think, maybe this means that our children will be the only ones applying to these colleges, which may result in higher chances of getting in.”</p>
<p>In practice this is unlikely to be the case. As you describe your school it is not likely to be on the radar screen of selective colleges. And that’s a handicap for even the most capable students coming from the school.</p>
<p>“We will see. I have a niece who shows up at her expensive private school when she feels like. She is given straight As. Her grades are generally dependent on the donations being made on her behalf.”</p>
<p>Ah … “expensive” and cushy private schools!! Academic private schools are notoriously challenging. The faculty, the parents and the peer students – the entire school’s atmosphere – is one of achievement. And the results are often of extraordinary college ready students. Missing a class? The opposite is true. Students often stay late. Faculty have extended office hours. And they work one-on-one with students who for health reasons have missed a class. Easy As? Quite the opposite. The challenge for American education is to figure out on how to bring the atmosphere of such schools into the public sector at an affordable price.</p>
<p>What choices do you really have?</p>
<p>If you don’t send your children to the local high school, what else could you do (without moving)? Are there nearby private schools that offer better academic preparation, and could your children get admitted to them? Can you afford private school? </p>
<p>Is boarding school an option, especially if nearby private schools are no more academically focused than the public schools? Can you afford that?</p>
<p>Might your children be eligible for public magnet schools, and are these schools appreciably better than the district high school?</p>
<p>Is moving a possibility? Are there other districts within commuting range of your job and your spouse’s where the education is better? Would you be willing to move?</p>
<p>Different families face different situations when it comes to high school choice (or lack of choice). What’s your situation?</p>
<p>I would pick a different school because I have a story on the danger of being in a school where going to college is not seen as important. A friend has 4 kids, the older ones are 26 and 24 and the younger ones are 13 and 12. She sent the older 2 to the non-challenging local public school and really regrets it. They’re bright and did fine in HS, but went on to community college, dropped out and went to work waiting tables, earning well and getting good tips–but now they’re realizing that they’re in dead-end jobs and wishing that they’d gone to college and thought about careers. Because of their experience she’s sending the younger 2 to private middle school and is planning on private, college-prep oriented high schools as well. </p>
<p>We’ve sent our D to private HS because our school district is ok but not the best–a number of the graduates go on to college but many others go to community college or don’t go on to college at all. We could move to some of the nearby communities with better graduation rates and wonderful college acceptance profiles but our taxes and home price would go up more than what we’re paying for private school tuition.</p>
<p>Your niece’s private school sounds like the exception to me. There are many good private schools that push their students to excel, academically and personally.</p>
<p>I wish I’d gone to a less competitive high school. Mine’s a highly ranked pressure cooker and it’s so wearing. At most schools people have all sorts of sports and stuff, but at mine you can only do one thing and still keep up with school work.</p>
<p>Actually, statistically, that depends on the private school. I have even read studies that show that private schools, ON AVERAGE, are not as good as public schools, ON AVERAGE.</p>
<p>If she were going to Greenhill, St. Mark’s, Hockaday, etc, I would not be saying this about her school. But there are a number of private schools around here, with non-competitive admissions (also, rolling admissions) where tuition is paid and good grades are guaranteed. I have even heard that a particular bigger name school that I would not have expected that out of, the grades depend on how much the family donates. But the particular school niece is at is one that flat out told us when we looked that attendance is not required. They said lessons are online anyway, so you can get it there. We had asked a question about what if our children were tardy due to traffic or something. Once we learned more about the school, we found the kids were using their mandatory laptops to cheat on tests and such, the teachers did not care. No one ever really earned below A’s. They do earn below A’s, but not often. And when they do, it is to earn B’s. People who are quite familiar with the Catholic schools here know this is not that great. At the 8th grade graduations, multiple people were commenting on “if you can’t get in to Jesuit or Ursuline, then this would be a good last choice.” After the public schools and a handful of other privates. The only kids who seemed to go there were ones who really wanted a deeply religious education in that field and couldn’t get in to a good high school, or the ones who just couldn’t cut it in the public schools.</p>
<p>[Are</a> Private Schools Really Better? - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670063,00.html]Are”>http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670063,00.html)</p>
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<p>On the other hand, there are plenty of private schools which are not academically elite, or even that good. There is a long thread about a freshman engineering student placed into precalculus (instead of calculus) as a college freshman after getting A grades in math at a private high school, indicating the low quality of the math instruction at the private high school. Choose carefully if you want to use a private high school.</p>
<p>My husband went to a Jesuit school, and took AP math. He earned straight A’s. He got to college and found he was not prepared and had to start with Calculus 1. I took AP math in a same general part of the country public high school. I earned mediocre grades and graduated early (trimester system at my high school, so I was done 2/3 of the way through the year). Yet, I tested out of the first 2 semesters of college calculus and breezed through multivariable…which, at my university, was the 3rd calculus. My husband tells me he struggled through calculus 1 and all the maths he took in college. He said he thought he was good in math, until he went to college and realized his A’s in his private high school were meaningless.</p>
<p>The private school niece is at is not Jesuit nor is it the sister school to Jesuit.</p>
<p>On the grades, there is something I have seen happen a few times. There are kids who have gone to private schools through junior year. Then transferred in their senior year. This is not a common thing, it just happens sometimes. At the public school, with the straight A’s, their class ranking ends up very high compared to the kids who have been there all along. Only, it did not take them the work to get to the top of the class that it took the other kids.</p>
<p>Overall, some school situations lead to higher grades just because the schools do that. Plus, with the smaller school, private ones, the teachers might take the time to write glowing references. As opposed to the bigger public ones where the teachers might have a lot of students coming and going. Whether or not the colleges recognize this in their admissions process, I am unsure. I hope they realize this and do not just blankly assume straight As in one school is the same as it is in another school.</p>
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<p>money does not buy grades per se, but money buys plenty of test prep, easier time in class, less homework, less ‘competition’ and the like, all while rubbing elbows with the kids of the rich and famous. </p>
<p>Our HS is several thousand students, and regardless of what you take, there’s some smart kid in there to make everyone else look like a class 1 moron (that’s competition for you). Or someone who gets 4.5’s with ease. Or huge class sizes that don’t help learning.</p>
<p>My comments are based solely on comparing assignment and test difficulty… It’s one thing to look at stellar GPA’s and SAT’s and another to ask kids in public high and private high about what the tests look like, how much time is needed, and the such. Private kids get to better schools, granted, but I’ll take learning over admissions any time.</p>
<p>turbo- you are simply incorrect. I am sure there are a few private schools that fit your model, but that is absolutely not the norm. My kids have been in a number of private schools, both day and boarding, and they don’t resemble what you are saying in any way.</p>
<p>Yes, there were some wealthy students. There were also scholarship students (day and boarding). The academics at each school were intense and there was quite a bit of homework. Writing skills were emphasized from elementary school on through high school. My kids and many of their peers (not all- just like from any school) attended highly selective colleges and were very well prepared. </p>
<p>I don’t know where you are getting your information. Do you really think the top prep schools in each city are just sliding kids through?</p>
<p>I think what it boils down to is that, as usual, there are both good and bad private schools as well as good and bad public schools.</p>
<p>OP, is this the same HS that would not place your junior in AP Calc, forcing her to go without math for a year?</p>
<p>The other thread started by the OP indicates another problem at the current school in that a student who has completed precalculus is not allowed to take an offered calculus course.</p>
<p>(Perhaps it would be interesting to note the AP test score distribution of the students who complete the calculus course. If it is mostly 1 and 2 scores, then no loss not being able to take it – try to take calculus at a local community college that offers a course that is transferable to the state flagship instead.)</p>
<p>If we’re talking boarding schools and the like, we’re likely talking super-elite schools with teacher to student ratios public schools would not even dream of. Likely better faculty, better choice of books and other teaching materials, and all that. I do not dispute any of the above. The outcome is not surprising either.</p>
<p>What I have seen personally - and I’m not generalizing - is that in the 3 prep schools in our wealthy suburb or nearabouts, the prep kids seemed to have way easier time, easier assignments, and the like. Not hard to do when your public school kid is friends and neighbors with the prep kids. </p>
<p>At the end of the day admissions wise the preps do better, no doubt there either. I’m talking academic difficulty, especially considering the realities of 30-40 kid classes versus 10-15, the realities of overloaded teachers versus not, and the like. </p>
<p>It’s not any different than the small private colleges versus massive state flagship issue. One certainly does not ‘buy’ grades but the extra money gets intangibles that help. Likewise, public schools of the size of ours can afford to provide classes or facilities in subjects most privates would never dream on (how’s building a house for scratch? - or science labs that rival university level labs?)…</p>
<p>How do these private schools that don’t provide top flight instruction and college prep exist in your communities? People just have extra money to spend??</p>
<p>Private high schools thrive in my area because the public high schools are overwhelmed, underfunded, unsafe (commons dress for gang prevention), not rigorous enough, etc… Admission to the private schools is very competitive and many kids don’t qualify. Almost 100% of the kids go directly to college after graduation–with a few choosing CC for economic reasons.</p>
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<p>Some public high schools may be even worse than the mediocre private high schools, and the latter may be the best that the students in those low quality public high school attendance zones can get into, afford, and commute to.</p>
<p>Some parents or students may choose the private high school for reasons other than top-end academic offerings, such as a religious education and environment.</p>
<p>I am an AP teacher at a large public suburban high school in the Midwest. I am also a mother of a 25, 22 and 20 year old. My advice to you is to run, not walk, away from that school. The size of the school you choose to send your children to shouldn’t be your main concern, but the quality of instruction definitely should. Students need to take AP classes to be truly prepared for ollege courses. My children all agreed that if they hadn’t taken AP classes they wouldn’t have been prepared for the rigor of a four year university. Good luck!</p>
<p>So, the AP / IB program is the defacto national education standard? And to think we poor Elbonians had it right all those decades when high school grades meant nothing and all that mattered to get into the few institutions of higher education in Elbonia was the one-shot National Entrance Exam, same exam, same day, whole country…</p>
<p>We have almost no choice in our state. Fortunately our public hs is really good. Not many AP courses, but really good teachers and my son was well prepared for a rigorous college curriculum.</p>
<p>Turbo,</p>
<p>As someone who has just graduated from an “elite” boarding school, I’d like to offer my experiences as a counterpoint to your grievances with private schools. Yes, I do agree that the tuition for private school can be overwhelming, but nearly half my graduating class was on financial aid. If you think class days from 8am to 6pm six days a week, not including 5 hours of homework per night and extracurriculars, is an “easier time”, then I don’t know what kind of school you’re talking about. Test prep programs are offered, but on your own free time (what free time?). </p>
<p>As for competition, you say that means one smart kid makes everyone else look like a moron. Well I can assure you that every single person in my class was smart, but our learning environment was an atmosphere of collaboration, not competition. I can honestly say that I got the best education of my life and I wish I could go back every single day because there is nothing like it.</p>
<p>As for OP, I highly encourage you to look into other options because a good education is crucial to building a foundation for your kids’ futures.</p>