Thanks for the reply. I have a question though. You say you see good reasons to send an elementary school kid to private school. Can you tell me why? And with that logic, I should take my 4th grader out of public and put him in private.
Sure:
First, in elementary school the first three years are all about
learning to read. After that, the program morphs into
reading to learn (meaning that in the first three years kids're reading about Dick and Jane for the purpose of learning to sound out and interpret words, but in fourth grade they're expected to be able to read a paragraph about history or science for the purpose of learning about history or science). Public schools have -- pretty much across the board -- abandoned old-fashioned phonics programs,
and the negative results show. When my oldest was starting school, I visited a number of schools, and the #1 thing I questioned was, How do you teach reading? In both of my girls' kindergarten classrooms, 100% of the students were reading simple sentences by Christmas, and my own girls read better than my average high school senior well before they finished elementary school. You need the best reading program, and -- in my opinion -- that's a phonics program.
The same argument is true for math: Kids need to focus on the basic-basics first, and public schools keep adopting this and that new program. Kids who start out with the old-fashioned basics succeed in the long run.
Second, in elementary school the kids' peer group matters more. I'm not saying that all the better kids go to private school -- not by a long shot -- but in a private elementary school setting you're looking at a classroom of parents who are involved enough to make a choice concerning their child's education, and involved parents tend to mean a better peer group during those
most formative years. It means that the teacher is able to teach instead of wasting her time "managing" the kids who aren't ready for school and who are already falling behind because no one helps them practice their reading at night. Sound snooty? Yeah, but it's also true.
You might consolidate this by saying, A good start = a good finish.
In contrast, by the time you reach high school -- and I'm talking about public high school here -- the kids are "self-segregated" into upper-level, college-bound classes ... or general-level classes, which are really remedial subjects. You might say, "Oh, but the private high schools offer ONLY the upper level classes, so it's all the same". Not really: The public high schools offer a greater selection of classes and wider options than the private schools, which are smaller. The high school where I teach houses about 1200 students, and we offer 3 levels of English and math for each grade, we teach four world languages, and we offer 19 AP classes "in house". Plus our students have the option to travel to other public schools to pick up classes we don't offer on our campus; for example, my school offers pre-engineering, while our neighboring schools offer a culinary academy, a pre-law enforcement program, and more. Also, public schools offer a wide variety of online classes, which means our students have literally hundreds of electives (and early college courses) from which to choose.
By the time the student reaches high school, peer group no longer matters so much in terms of academics. That kid who used to disrupt 2nd grade because he couldn't stay in his seat is now taking remedial English and shop -- he isn't in your kid's AP Calculus class. Your kid may be with him in PE class, but so what?
I can absolutely see the point in putting a child into a small, private setting for the first few years of school, but once you reach high school, they're better off in public school. By and large, private schools manage to make themselves "look good" by accepting only the top students.
Regardless of what choices you make, you need to pay attention to what your child is learning; don't ever sit back and assume that the school's got it managed. I used to teach 9th grade, and every year I had a number of students who'd attended this or that private school ... but who'd transferred to public school for high school (and I definitely see why parents make the change at that point -- everyone's new in 9th grade, so it just makes sense). I saw definite trends depending where the students attended middle school:
- The kids who came from public school
varied widely in their ability and achievement, but they'd all had a fairly balanced program in terms of having read a couple young adult novels, written papers, and studied vocabulary. They were woefully inadequate in grammar.
- The kids who came from a certain Christian school had read NOTHING except the Bible, but they could zip through grammar worksheets like nobody's business and they KNEW the 5-paragraph essay format.
- The kids from the expensive private school down the road had read LOADS of novels, but they'd had NO instruction in writing, and they couldn't understand why every completed assignment didn't automatically earn them an A+++.
What choices did I make for my own kids?
My girls started in a small Christian school, and they excelled. We agreed to do it on a year-to-year basis. Their kindergarten and 1st grade years were FABULOUS, and we were willing to make the financial sacrifice to keep them there ... but after 1st grade, we found that it was good. And the sacrifice wasn't worth good; we thought the money would be better spent on travel and other enriching activities -- and we did spend heavily on art classes, robotics camp, etc. -- things which would've been beyond our means if we'd kept them in private school. We moved them to public school, and they qualified for gifted and talented pull-out classes, which were above-and-beyond what was available to them in the smaller private school. I think we did the right thing at the right times.
Middle school was crap for both of them. In retrospect, I wish we'd had the insight to pull them out and homeschool them for those years -- it was the logistics of two working parents that kept us from doing it , and we should've worked it out somehow. Private school wouldn't have been any better; their church friends who were in private school didn't learn anything in middle school either. The thing is, the focus wasn't on academics -- it was on personal growth, liberal thinking, finding yourself, etc., etc., etc.
They attended public high school, where they were both heavily involved in clubs and excelled academically. They're now in college (a freshman and a senior) on scholarships.
