Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I tutor middle and high school from both public and private in the DMV area. Apart from Sidwell and Albans/NCS, and maybe 2 or 3 others, privates are not providing better quality of academics than public. The parochial’s are the bottom of the barrel and the single sex schools generally are the better privates.
MCPS is by far the best education in terms of higher mathematics.
Do you tutor a large enough sample size to make this assessment? A sufficient number of students from private, parochial, and public? Students who receive tutoring as extra academic support as well as those who receive tutoring to supplement existing high achievement? Do these students come from VA, MD, and DC? Different socioeconomic classes?
I grow tired of generalizations like the one above. Some publics will be better than some privates, some parochials will be stronger than some publics, etc. I worked in a dreadful public and a great parochial school. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some private down the street that’s better than both. I suspect the public vs. private comparisons on this thread simply stem from people wanting to justify their own choices. If you picked something that works for your family, then that’s all that should matter.
To put a bit of this to rest: states require a minimum number of days for private schools. In MD it is 170. Many publics spend more than 10 days on mandated state tests, so right there is the main difference.