If You've Had Kids in Private and Public, Which Did You Like Better?

[Anonymous]

I liked private much better. At that age, the MCPS K was pretty much herding cats, whereas the private Montessori K had reasonably socialized children. The ratio meant that the Montessori teachers could spend their time teaching and nurturing. The K teacher spent her time disciplining students.

[Anonymous]

Private. But not by much. The curriculum is more creative and flexible. A marine biologist parent came in one day and let the kids dissect a baby squid. I've never seen the flexibility in curriculum at public to do that. It may exist, but it wasn't my experience.

However, I'm also not paying $30,000. Our tuition is much lower and very adorable to me. I don't feel there is enough difference to justify tuition so high it significantly infringes on the financial ability to do other things you care about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Private. But not by much. The curriculum is more creative and flexible. A marine biologist parent came in one day and let the kids dissect a baby squid. I've never seen the flexibility in curriculum at public to do that. It may exist, but it wasn't my experience.

However, I'm also not paying $30,000. Our tuition is much lower and very adorable to me. I don't feel there is enough difference to justify tuition so high it significantly infringes on the financial ability to do other things you care about.

PP, I love this autocorrect. Affordable/adorable.

[Anonymous]

I have two really different kids. DS went from public to private in MS and now is in HS. Private had the smaller classes, individualized teaching he needed. DD is the super student type that public school loves. She wants to go to private for HS.

[Anonymous]

My ADD child went from private to public in 9th grade. He prefers public and we think the experience has been fantastic. And free!

[Anonymous]

I think if the child has educated parents, the benefits of private really start in middle school. That's when we moved our kids to private. Before that, if there are any deficiencies, they can usually be made up at home.

[Anonymous]

We had kids in both and it depended on the kid. One thrived in public school much more than he did in private school. He much preferred the larger group of kids socially, and the academic differentiation. The other had LDs so was better suited for small classes in a mainstream private school. I liked all the schools they attended but in the end have more fondness for the public school (MCPS) than the private schools. The public school also had the huge advantage of having neighborhood friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Private. But not by much. The curriculum is more creative and flexible. A marine biologist parent came in one day and let the kids dissect a baby squid. I've never seen the flexibility in curriculum at public to do that. It may exist, but it wasn't my experience.

However, I'm also not paying $30,000. Our tuition is much lower and very adorable to me. I don't feel there is enough difference to justify tuition so high it significantly infringes on the financial ability to do other things you care about.

Our DCPS has parents come in all the time, especially the scientists. And the parent expertise is very diverse and interesting. The school keeps a directory of volunteer parent expertise for teachers to choose from. So if a teacher thinks, gee it would be really great to have someone come in and talk about solar power; check the directory and wow -- 4 parents available who work in the solar industry, great! All school should do this. Not all teachers take advantage of it, but it is a great free resource.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think if the child has educated parents, the benefits of private really start in middle school. That's when we moved our kids to private. Before that, if there are any deficiencies, they can usually be made up at home.

I'm wondering about this. Do you think it's hard to get a kid into private school at middle school?

My Kindergartner is in private now ( we live in another state). The school is fine, but I do feel like my husband and I teach him everything he knows. His teachers are much more interested in behavior. They basically said at the conference that he was doing great because he sits at circle time and knows the routines and follows directions etc... And I'm happy to hear this, but there didn't seem to be any emphasis on learning. For example i believe my son struggles with reading/writing/letter sounds. We work with him a lot at home and we can tell he's improving. The teachers didn't notice he was having any trouble. And then our son is really good at math. He loves it and is already doing multiplication. We do math activities/games with him at home and he loves it. I recently taught him how to tell time. I feel like most of the things he knows is from us teaching him. His teachers said that in math they are just learning to write numbers so they had no idea he could add/subtract and even multiply. Then at the end they showed us some kind of test that all the kids did. It was mostly a language arts type of test. Our son got slightly below average on this. ( not below average for his class, but out of all test takers). We thought this was an important piece of info! We'd like to know which areas he struggles with and we know there are some... that way we can help. His teachers didn't even talk about this and are not concerned. I realize it is just kindergarten and so many things come with time and there is no need to make a big deal about the things he struggles with, but I just thought at a private school the teachers would be more in tune with this sort of thing and give extra help where it is needed.

So this has my husband and I wondering if we should just put him in public school for now and save the costly tuition. We feel we can help him with areas where he has difficulty.

And we do like the school he is in. Maybe I shouldn't be so concerned with academics in Kindergarten??

The other thing I wonder about is neighborhood friends and playmates. His schoolmates live in a much broader area and it would be nice to have more neighborhood friends. But will I care about this later?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think if the child has educated parents, the benefits of private really start in middle school. That's when we moved our kids to private. Before that, if there are any deficiencies, they can usually be made up at home.

I'm wondering about this. Do you think it's hard to get a kid into private school at middle school?

My Kindergartner is in private now ( we live in another state). The school is fine, but I do feel like my husband and I teach him everything he knows. His teachers are much more interested in behavior. They basically said at the conference that he was doing great because he sits at circle time and knows the routines and follows directions etc... And I'm happy to hear this, but there didn't seem to be any emphasis on learning. For example i believe my son struggles with reading/writing/letter sounds. We work with him a lot at home and we can tell he's improving. The teachers didn't notice he was having any trouble. And then our son is really good at math. He loves it and is already doing multiplication. We do math activities/games with him at home and he loves it. I recently taught him how to tell time. I feel like most of the things he knows is from us teaching him. His teachers said that in math they are just learning to write numbers so they had no idea he could add/subtract and even multiply. Then at the end they showed us some kind of test that all the kids did. It was mostly a language arts type of test. Our son got slightly below average on this. ( not below average for his class, but out of all test takers). We thought this was an important piece of info! We'd like to know which areas he struggles with and we know there are some... that way we can help. His teachers didn't even talk about this and are not concerned. I realize it is just kindergarten and so many things come with time and there is no need to make a big deal about the things he struggles with, but I just thought at a private school the teachers would be more in tune with this sort of thing and give extra help where it is needed.

So this has my husband and I wondering if we should just put him in public school for now and save the costly tuition. We feel we can help him with areas where he has difficulty.

And we do like the school he is in. Maybe I shouldn't be so concerned with academics in Kindergarten??

The other thing I wonder about is neighborhood friends and playmates. His schoolmates live in a much broader area and it would be nice to have more neighborhood friends. But will I care about this later?

Yes, it is harder to get kids into the competitive schools at the middle and high school levels, more kids apply.

[Anonymous]

I love the persistent mindset that public schools are "free!!!!!" (If we insist on looking at it that way, you know that you get what you pay for.)

[Anonymous]

16:35 - I think it must really depend on the private school. I volunteered in my DC's math class (Kindergarten) recently and we played math games that incorporated having to quickly add and subtract, know odds and evens, counting by 10s and 100s...definitely not learning to write numbers anymore. I have an older child who attended a different private and his class was very large and they didn't play these kinds of math games in small groups of 2 or 3. I wish he had the advantage of the classroom environment my younger child has now.

[Anonymous]

We pay only 7k.per year for Catholic school per child. Each year we struggle with our decision because we live in MC. Maybe not super helpful for you because we don't have the public school experience but I can tell you my kids are doing wonderful are in a daring environment and love school. Could they be that way public? Possibly. I guess we are going with if it isn't broken don't fix it approach.

[Anonymous]

Caring autocorrected to daring.

[Anonymous]

We've done both, for two kids. Overall I like the private better for the personalized attention, such as much smaller class sizes. I also like the opportunity to interact more with teachers and administrators - I knew what was going on more easily and thoroughly at private. However, I liked the parents and peer group better at public. Private is pretty intense and competitive, but we more easily found a niche of smart, engaged folks at public who weren't after each others throats. This made a huge difference, especially for my daughter late in ES.