Why are private school applications still at an all time high?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public school has severely deteriorated due to the influx of low-income foreigners and changes in discipline policies.

People who value education and better environments for their children are opting for private. Simple as.

These foreigners have strong studying ethics and work hard to excel.

Some do, of course, but many recent immigrant minors have uneducated parents and come from cultures that don’t prioritize education.

People who worked hard to get here and raise their kids here probably prioritize their families and their kids’ education more than people who were born on third base and have never overcome any real challenges in their lives.

[Anonymous]

We applied and enrolled our DC in private off the bat. A good friend, a MCPS teacher with a kid in MCPS elementary, asked why I didn’t give public a chance first then switch out if I felt the same later.

Now that same MCPS teacher says she’s giving up on the public school system and enrolling her DC in private mid year.

The tide is changing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public school has severely deteriorated due to the influx of low-income foreigners and changes in discipline policies.

People who value education and better environments for their children are opting for private. Simple as.

These foreigners have strong studying ethics and work hard to excel.

Some do, of course, but many recent immigrant minors have uneducated parents and come from cultures that don’t prioritize education.

People who worked hard to get here and raise their kids here probably prioritize their families and their kids’ education more than people who were born on third base and have never overcome any real challenges in their lives.

+1

[Anonymous]

There's an entire thread about how 2025 was the worst year ever at MCPS:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1307787.page

No surprise we're in private. We started them off at MCPS but left after seeing how they attempted to handle Covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public schools are atrocious. A very destructive force in America. Even the good ones in affluent areas have gotten far, far worse over the past few decades. And the merely above average ones? They turn out kids who can barely read or write.

Far more kids who get into MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc went to public high schools, not private high schools. So, not sure what you are saying about public schools being atrocious is correct, unless you are a bigot or a xenophobe. And how is public education for children a destructive force? Send them to coal mines instead?

This isn’t very smart. How many kids go to public? How many to private? You have to do a weighted percentage to have it make sense. I bet it’s a much larger share of private school kids got to top untiversities

Betting is not very smart. And misspelling “universities” is … funny and speaks for itself. If you lined up only the top private and only the top public schools, more go to Harvard from public high schools, for instance. This data is public. Boston Latin, Stuyvesant, etc; Harvard Westlake, Andover, etc.

That’s really not fair to compare top private and top public schools. Kids at schools like Stuyvesant and Thomas Jefferson etc score 1500+ average on the SAT, whereas the top privates are 1400s, even they are even submitting their scores or paying someone else to take the test. And the public school kids’ parents are mostly likely not giving fat donations to top universities or using legacy admits. Merit versus money. Too many differences.

Not any more at TJ- thanks to a woke school board at FCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Applications for admissions to most private schools in the DMV area area keep getting more competitive every year. One school we are applying to for 9th ( from our K-8) told us that applications have been up 70% this year.
I can understand why applications were up during the pandemic , but why are people still increasingly applying to privates five years later ?
Has the quality of education gone down at the public schools? Did people do well in the stock market over the past few years?
Just asking a genuine question.

Liberal obsession with DEI means academic rigor dumbing down public schools.

[Anonymous]

Just go to Blair SMCS or RMIB

[Anonymous]

The population is growing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Applications for admissions to most private schools in the DMV area area keep getting more competitive every year. One school we are applying to for 9th ( from our K-8) told us that applications have been up 70% this year.
I can understand why applications were up during the pandemic , but why are people still increasingly applying to privates five years later ?
Has the quality of education gone down at the public schools? Did people do well in the stock market over the past few years?
Just asking a genuine question.

Liberal obsession with DEI means academic rigor dumbing down public schools.

I think it’s more that the obsession with test prepping and its reliance on rote learning is increasingly seen as a barrier to developing modern cognitive skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Applications for admissions to most private schools in the DMV area area keep getting more competitive every year. One school we are applying to for 9th ( from our K-8) told us that applications have been up 70% this year.
I can understand why applications were up during the pandemic , but why are people still increasingly applying to privates five years later ?
Has the quality of education gone down at the public schools? Did people do well in the stock market over the past few years?
Just asking a genuine question.

Liberal obsession with DEI means academic rigor dumbing down public schools.

I think it’s more that the obsession with test prepping and its reliance on rote learning is increasingly seen as a barrier to developing modern cognitive skills.

Kids coming here for college from other countries are much better prepared than kids from US schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just go to Blair SMCS or RMIB

Except those won’t be options anymore if MCPS has its way.

[Anonymous]

For us its about how bad public has become. Financially we should be in public schools and we purchased a house with that as the plan - we felt like getting into a stronger feeder was the best financial option with multiple children. Started out and it was just awful - kids were fine but the learning experience was total shit. We moved to private. Public was bad enough that we accepted having zero disposable income and moving into a smaller house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because public school class sizes are huge, there's a range of abilities that is impossible for even the most seasoned teacher to accommodate, and well behaved kids who are on or above grade level are ignored. The established private schools aren't stupid and have done a good job advertising to UMC families of solid students who are increasingly fed up. Throw in a modest merit scholarship for the ones with top grades and test scores and it's not a hard sell.

There are not merit scholarships for top grades at local independent schools

Huh? There are definitely merit scholarships for local private high schools.

Below the high school level, it's not called a merit scholarship but the FA decision is often not *solely* about need, which makes a segment of DCUM crazy but is true nonetheless. Schools use FA to keep students they want to keep, including those who boost test scores or fill out the advanced track classes.

PP. Only the Catholic schools. Which is not what most of us think of when we say the words “private school”.

You cannot name an independent school in DC/MD that hands out true merit money to smart applicants as an enticement. It’s flat out not allowed in AISGW.

Financial Aid
AISGW member schools provided more than $140 million in need-based financial aid to 7,896 students in 2017-2018. On average, need-based aid accounted for 13.6% of the schools’ gross tuition. In addition to need-based financial aid, AISGW member schools also awarded more than $11 million in merit scholarships in 2015-2016. For parents wishing to learn more about financial aid options, we recommend that you contact schools directly. To find a school, please search the directory of Our Schools.

https://www.aisgw.org/affordability#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20need%2Dbased%20financial,that%20you%20contact%20schools%20directly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because public school class sizes are huge, there's a range of abilities that is impossible for even the most seasoned teacher to accommodate, and well behaved kids who are on or above grade level are ignored. The established private schools aren't stupid and have done a good job advertising to UMC families of solid students who are increasingly fed up. Throw in a modest merit scholarship for the ones with top grades and test scores and it's not a hard sell.

There are not merit scholarships for top grades at local independent schools

Huh? There are definitely merit scholarships for local private high schools.

Below the high school level, it's not called a merit scholarship but the FA decision is often not *solely* about need, which makes a segment of DCUM crazy but is true nonetheless. Schools use FA to keep students they want to keep, including those who boost test scores or fill out the advanced track classes.

PP. Only the Catholic schools. Which is not what most of us think of when we say the words “private school”.

You cannot name an independent school in DC/MD that hands out true merit money to smart applicants as an enticement. It’s flat out not allowed in AISGW.

Financial Aid
AISGW member schools provided more than $140 million in need-based financial aid to 7,896 students in 2017-2018. On average, need-based aid accounted for 13.6% of the schools’ gross tuition. In addition to need-based financial aid, AISGW member schools also awarded more than $11 million in merit scholarships in 2015-2016. For parents wishing to learn more about financial aid options, we recommend that you contact schools directly. To find a school, please search the directory of Our Schools.

https://www.aisgw.org/affordability#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20need%2Dbased%20financial,that%20you%20contact%20schools%20directly.

What is “need-based aid”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP. Public education is degrading every year, and parents learned too much about what really happened in the classrooms during the pandemic.

By that you mean 2 hours of teaching and 6 hours of crowd control?