Is private school worth it?
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Anonymous
| We are in Arlington. If you have a high performing self-motivated child is private school worth it or would we be better served by our public schools? I know this is a broad question, but I’m curious how others have thought this through. |
Anonymous
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Apart from the educational aspect, do you also want your kids to have friends in your neighborhood / community? Or perhaps a particular private school's educational pedagogy is more important than neighborhood connections?
There are a lot of high performing self-motivated kids in Arlington's public schools through high school. Usually there has to be something uniquely compelling about the private schools you are considering. For example, Beauvoir is a good option if you like the Cathedral schools through NCS or STA. |
Anonymous
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This question is asked at least once a month. Nobody can tell you what is "worth it" to your family.
I think the best way to approach this is to define the problem with public school that you want to address by moving to private. |
Anonymous
To piggy back off this comment: what do YOU think is the best education? For us, it was low / no tech which means a lot of time spent reading real, whole books and pencils, paper and math textbooks. I cannot be convinced otherwise. But that is certainly NOT what many envision their kids devoting 40 hrs a week to. So, what are YOUR goals? |
Anonymous
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Whether it's worth it depends on what the "it" is. What spending would you need to cut back on in order to pay tuition?
My kid started in public school and moved to private at the end of ES. He's now in HS. Compared to my friends' kids who go to the HS he would have attended, he's getting a deeper, more interesting education. It will not change his college outcomes or life trajectory. |
Anonymous
| For us it's worth it because we're getting an option that isn't available in our public schools. This is the way we will continue to look at it throughout DD's education. For example, if we think an all girls school is the right environment for her, that's obviously available only in a private. |
Anonymous
| Depends on the kid, the public and the private school. One of ours graduated from the local public, did great. The other, it was too large, class size was even too big. They went to private, where class size was capped at 15. The kids weren't the best and the brightest (not as smart as in the public school), but that gave our kid the opportunity to really shine, where they wouldn't have had that chance at the public |
Anonymous
| No |
Anonymous
+1 we are in this same camp. Yes, it has been worth it for us. We reassess every year. But the low/no tech and level of intention and attention dd gets is absolutely worth it for us. |
Anonymous
| For us (in MCPS) we value being in neighborhood schools and supplement through RSM and a literacy enrichment tutor. |
Anonymous
| I’m not sure you can generalize. Depends on the elementary school you’re zoned to, and which privates you are considering. We gave our local public a try for several years and just could not handle the literacy curriculum, lack of handwritten work, and constant use of screens and random videos / Disney movies. Not to mention some of the behavioral and cultural stuff. We switched to a “cheap” parochial and now DS writes probably 50x the amount he did in public, studies vocabulary and spelling, and does real science labs instead of “STEM legos.” But we believe in traditional curriculum and methods for elementary school. Not everyone does and that’s ok. |
Anonymous
We are in FCPS. Our teens are finishing up and headed to college soon. We have had a front-row seat to the decline of FCPS. Standards have dropped dramatically. Teachers are fleeing in droves. The schedule is a disaster. FCPS claims to have a “budget crisis” but they created their own mess with increasingly wasteful spending. The one academic refuge is the AAP program (required by the Commonwealth), but even that has been dramatically watered down as much as FCPS can get away with. We are saving now to pay for private school if we ever become grandparents. |
Anonymous
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It varies and I have taught in private schools. If you have wealthy parents who are paying because it's a way to gift money tax free or you have a trust fund, inherited wealth or a very high income it's a different discussion than if finances matter.
Pros: small classes, beautiful facilities, teacher can give more attention to students because of the small classes, often better instruction in language arts, some incredible teachers but you have that in public too Cons: Often public schools have more rigorous math programs, sometimes better in science too. Wealthy bubble may not be such a good thing if you want your kid to be down to earth and have perspective, costs more than some colleges, teachers don't have to have same level of credentials as public and having a master's or Ph.D in subject doesn't mean they know how to teach it, lower pay for teachers so harder get rid of bad ones and often those teachers are wealthy and there is risk of lawsuit so they shuffle them around. Teachers don't always get needed feedback to improve because parents afraid to complain. Families have fewer rights than in public school unless they are a mega donors. If you give too much "constructive criticism" they can tell you the school isn't a match. Getting rid of APs is BS IMO. Some teachers stank at preparing students so now they use shady to say it's advanced, but you need to do independent prep to be ready for AP. (Translation-this teacher won't prep your kid well). They make the excuse it's so they don't have to follow what the college board dictates, but it's a way to keep teachers who don't produce IMO. |
Anonymous
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Not to us. He goes to school to socialize and loves it. No need to pay for it.
Everything he needs to know to do well in life, I can tell him in 5 minutes. |
Anonymous
no |