Stay at TT or Retire to Suburbs
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
I say the opposite. To each his own. Don't yuck my yum. |
Anonymous
| There will be smart classmates and good teachers at both. Downsides to public will be rote curriculum (current philosophy is to ensure consistency through control), teaching to the standardized test, larger class sizes, many of eliminated tracking/gifted programs at elementary and middle school levels, bureaucracy, populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources, worse overall college matriculation, grade inflation which makes it diffiuclt to stand out. Downsides to private are cost, more legacy/donor families, less economic diversity, usually no tracking at lower school level. |
Anonymous
Hoo boy. "Rote curriculum": no, the broad pedagogy is the same at both places, nobody's having you spend half of your time memorizing crap anymore. "Teaching to the test": not really, though we did find that when we moved to NYC the teachers spent a lot more time teaching writing in general because that's a major component of the NY state exam. (but all year, and not specifically directed to state exam questions) "Larger class sizes": suburbs barely have any gap with privates now - like 18 versus 22 - and the city is in the process of matching suburbs. "Eliminated tracking/gifted programs": public schools do lots of tracking, if anything this more of a problem in private schools. "Bureaucracy": seriously? how many associate deans of blahdeblah does your private school have? "populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources": yeah, heaven forbid our kids are exposed to any of those people. "worse overall college matriculation": sure, because the private schools have most of the rich kids. "grade inflation": the modal GPA at Horace Mann is an A-. |
Anonymous
HM students have sky high SATs, the fact the mode is an A- speaks to grade deflation, they would have a 4.infinity at a decent suburban public. ESL does not add to a classroom You have to be horribly ignorant to think even 4T privates charging over 65,000 a year have 18 students in a classroom as the norm If you can afford it without sacrifices, go to private school. |
Anonymous
you seem to be all over the place. the suburbs have average class size of 22 - if so that is a huge reason to move out of NYC public - if NYC public stays at 30 (which it was in our kids middle school). so i would push back on that point. the overall college matriculation of the upper middle class private school kid is better than the average upper middle class suburban kid. (keeping wealth constant) classes are more interesting at private. publics have alot more AP classes which is essentially teaching to the test. |
Anonymous
FWIW, 18 was the class size at Fieldston during my kid's brief tenure there. |
Anonymous
| Also, "HM students have good GPAs because they're smart, suburban public school kids have good GPAs because of grade inflation" is a textbook No True Scotsman argument |
Anonymous
Huh? They take a train to the city if they're motivated and do stuff there. And then they take a train home like thousands and thousands of people have done forever. Plenty of these "unimpressive" suburban high school students end up at hypsm. I don't think you know what you're talking about. |
Anonymous
We looked at a lot of private high schools and the class sizes seemed to be around 17-20ish. Even at the small schools I didn't see any super small classes. I don't think class size, within reason, is that much of an issue if you're dealing with well behaved high school kids. More of an issue for younger kids or in environments where you may have disruptors. Very small class sizes are nice but I'm not sure how well they prepare kids for college. One of the things I thought about when deciding on a HS was whether going from a very small K-8 to a very small high school would make the transition to college more challenging for my kid. Perhaps it's better to learn how to navigate a larger environment when your kid still has support at home. I've heard people making this argument when sending kids to SHS vs private. |
Anonymous
|
This thread seems so backwards. Learn about your child. Pay attention to their strengths and weaknesses. Then place them in the best educational environment you can that works well for them and your family. Starting in grade school and continuing all the way through higher education. I don't really think you can reverse engineer a student into a very very competitive higher education environment very easily. I don't even think it's wise if it were possible.
Having been through it at hypsm, there are are lots of rockstar private and public school students. And there are also public and private school students that have their struggles. It is a lot to do with the individual regardless of where they went to high school. |
Anonymous
Palo Alto and other nice suburbs sending a ton of kids to Ivies exist across the country. This is about NYC suburbs, and they do not send that many kids to Ivies given the wealth and resources of the region. |
Anonymous
HM students are smart though. Don't act like the curriculum and demands are the same. |
Anonymous
Completely agree. |
Anonymous
Most suburban publics no longer track at elementary and sometimes middle it's an equity thing. Mamdani has already indicated that he plans to do this for the very youngest grades in NYC publics. My private is entirely run by less about six people on campus and its a K-12. Every town has its own board of education with oversight of all schools within its boundaries. In contrast.the NYC public school employ 2254 people in central administration, that is, people who don't work at any partiuclar school and are just bureaucracy. My kids have 10 to 12 kids in this classes at private, and never more than 15. Our local suburban school has 20 to 30 kids at a class, my kid's experience was on the higher end in elementary, which was when they attended. AP classes in public schools are very geared towards the test. My kids spent considerable time in public elementary preparing for the state standardized tests. These tests were given at every grade level in the spring. Nearly all suburban publics standardize their curriculum throughout the district so every class is reading the same books, and even doing the same worksheets, etc. . . again, I know this because my kids attended a suburban public and this is something that the teachers complained about a lot. The private my kids attend allows the teachers to develop their own curriculum each year as a grade level each year at the elemtary and middle school level, with some differences between classes. |
Anonymous
The median SAT at our private is about 200 pts higher than our wealthy suburban public. |