Is private school REALLY different than public school??

[Anonymous]

Privates can be different, without publics being bad. To me, the biggest difference is that a classroom with 12 to 14 students is very different than a class of 20 plus, especially at the middle and high school levels when class sizes get really big in many public schools. I had my kids in public school for five years, and they were fortunate to have some truly great teachers. But those teachers weren't able to give them the same type of assignments and differentiation as they get in private simply because of time constraints. Add in the school days are longer in private, the facilities are much better, and the teachers have much greater freedom over the curriculum. Both the teaching staff( which was all white and ninety eight percent female in our public)and student body are more diverse than our public, which had only three percent farms.


But private is financially out of reach for most families. I would like to see some of the great things about private replicated in public, but public doesn't seem to be going in that direction with the current focus on curriculum uniformity and no child left behind standardized testing.