Anonymous wrote:Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city and discuss it than the reverse, because there’s a whole range of passable suburbs with decent education that goes beyond what is mentioned here (Scarsdale Milburn etc, which is a very narrow slice of suburbia)
I dislike the suburbs but this just isn't true. I can easily afford living in the city, independent school etc. but if I could move to a rural area in the mountains I would do it in a heartbeat. Not everyone is enamored with city life.
So you dislike the suburbs and wouldn’t move to the city despite having the means. Guess you’re a tougher than average customer
I live in Manhattan and like it fine, but I love being out in nature more. I think there are a lot of people like me who are tied to the city for professional reasons but would move if they could work fully remote or retire early. Many of my friends in tech did just that after the pandemic.
The question here isn’t city or move to Jackson WY or Woodstock VT. It is tristate suburbs or the city.
The post I was replying to said:
"Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city." I think that just isn't true - most people in the U.S. do not like city life and prefer to be near but not in the city. Is it so hard to believe that NYC (Manhattan) isn't the center of the universe?
Most cities aren’t like NY, which is singular. Suburbs in most metros are closer to downtown and more expensive than the cities themselves, residents weren’t priced out. People in Huntington don’t commute 90 minutes door to door each way because they prefer the suburbs. Likewise Darien and Bedford. Ply a housewife with two or three cocktails and she’ll talk about how much she hates it
Anonymous wrote: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.
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-.
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.
The smartest, most successful people on the planet (rich New Yorkers) send their kids to private. Are they dumb or delusional for doing so? If you have the means, do likewise. And public can be fine, but please don't tell us it is known for less bureaucracy, smaller classes, more advanced material, and better networking than the TTs.
Again, people are making these ridiculous, very absolute statements. The world is not so black and white. Each has its pros and cons. Private has smaller classes, great resources, and usually more flexibility. And the resources of NYC. Some publics because of their size can offer more classes, more exposure to the real world, plenty of academic rigor, etc. They also have more government bureaucracy and less flexibility (which isn't always a bad thing, but often is)
I grew up in a very nice NJ suburb (but not Summit or Millburn, which are the two people like to cite). I went to high school with the children of several PhD Bell Labs researchers (look it up if you don't know it), multiple Columbia and NYU professors, and partners at top law firms. I did not grow up in Princeton but there are lots of incredibly smart Princeton professors and IAS researchers who send their kids to public schools in the area. There are plenty of very bright, successful (not sure how you define that) people who choose to live in the suburbs for whatever reasons. So these absolutist statements that all the smart people are in NYC are ignorant.
And looking at medians or means or whatever else for these schools is useless. Academically I lived in a bubble with the other kids who were at the top of my class. And those kids were just as smart and have accomplished just as much as the NYC private TT alums of my generation. But there were plenty of kids who were not as bright or motivated. And in HS these kids were not in my academic classes. And being exposed to them in homeroom, gym, activities, sports teams, etc. was a great life experience for me. And it has led me to learn to not be as narrow minded and judgy as some of the posters here who refuse to acknowledge anything good about the suburbs. Things have definitely changed at schools like this since then, probably more for the worse than the better (see how I can admit that my side is not without holes - try it sometime). But they still have a lot to offer for a highly motivated student and they will still do well, get into excellent schools and achieve there.
Note that I write this as a parent of a NYC private school student, who chose this school over SHSAT schools after being in excellent NYC public lower schools. So I have seen it all. Have you?
Yes, I went through public school system in Princeton. I got a very good education. Even so, inferior to what my kids got in private school in every respect. I also sent my kids to a wealthy suburban public elementary (rated 10/10 on best schools). Saw first hand that they were abandoning tracking, which is also happening in DC area schools and discussed frequently on this board (and being implemented by Mamdani in NY). Heard teachers complaining about curriculum being scripted by central office that they could not deviate from. Saw my kids spend lots of classroom time preparing for yearly state proficiency tests, even doing mock questions on a regular basis. Neither my kids or I had a class size smaller than 25 kids.
OP here, thank you so much for sharing this. I believe your experience is probably the most instructive to the choice we're evaluating (Princeton public vs. NYC TT). I just have two questions: 1. Do you feel that the educational experience in Princeton publics would have materially changed since you had attended (e.g. less tracking, more ESL / special needs, etc.)? 2. Do you feel that the degree to which your children's experience in private school has been better than public (in learning environment, learned material, network benefits, etc.) is dramatic enough to lead to definitively different life outcomes?
We're really struggling with the decision. We (but not the kids) prefer the suburban lifestyle but it'd really kill us to know that we sacrificed something that could have been very positively significant for their life trajectory, especially since we can comfortable afford the tuition.
Yes, I feel that public school today is materially different than three decades ago. The biggest difference is teaching to the test, I went to school in the days before No Child Left Behind, so we didn’t “practice” or learn things for the yearly state assessments, and APs were not a big thing, so teachers could design the curriculum for advanced classes themselves. ESL has grown a ton in Princeton, there was always a very small low income population, but no real Hispanic population, now it is almost ten percent of the high school population, nearly all recent immigrants. Special needs were not mainstreamed, I really think, for better or worse, that handling kids with behavior problems, whether normal track or special needs, takes a lot of teacher time. It just isn’t possible to remove kids from the classroom anymore. Private schools are usually pretty quick to suspend kids or to counsel them out. There is a real grinder population at the high school level that didn’t exist when I was there — the larger area has become very popular with highly ambitious, highly educated immigrants because of the quality of the public schools. High school suicides are an issue, not necessarily limited to Princeton, but also at the West Windsor and other local highly regarded public schools
Who can say what makes a material difference in a kid’s life? I intended to keep my kids in public school through at least elementary, bought a house zoned for the highest regarded elementary in our area, and pulled my kids before the oldest finished. As I said before, Princeton has many local private schools, some of which are excellent, so you have that as a back up.
Okay so if we understand you ....you want to remove yourself and your kids from the special needs population, the immigrant population both spanish-speaking and non-spanish-speaking, the "grinder" population....I guess that leaves the affluent white folks? Isn't that already who you're currently hanging with I don't know late private school? So why are you going through the hassle of moving?
Not the PP, but wow do you really have to be this toxic?
For context, I'm both Asian and had a younger sibling with autism who I helped raise for much of my own childhood. I've actually never believed in integrating special needs kids wholesale and certainly would not want my own kids in a class where the teacher would be stretched between accommodating someone like my sibling and my kids at the same time. I literally would not know nor could I imagine how that could be done.
Secondly, as an Asian parent who 100% believes in setting high expectations the immigrant grinder mindset is great at achieving a high grades but not so much when it comes to actually learning or developing critical thinking. Take it from someone who have seen peers literally on IV drip in order to stay up and prep for the college entrance exam, you do not want this.
Ok. Public schools are funded by all of the tax payers. When different groups are getting different treatment and different opportunities, that also causes a lot of issues. They need to support struggling students and enrich the advanced students. There is no "counseling out" of any eligible child, nor should there be.
If poster come on here raving about the best and most successful people in the world go to nyc private schools, they should expect some pushback and they deserve it .
What is untrue about that statement? UHNW people disproportionately send their children to private schools and they disproportionately live in NYC.
Yes! They went to those schools because they are the greatest and their kids are the greatest and go to those schools and then their kids are going to be the greatest and go to those schools. These folks need to avoid public schools.
No one is more insular and parochial than rich Manhattanites (proud transplant here). The lack of empathy and curiosity in the average TT parent is the reason why we have no interest in independent schools despite being, by some measures, professionally succesful and able to afford them.
“No one”? Try the Amish or orthodox. Or even your average Long Island or NJ town.
Don't forget Westchester.
True with Westchester, although less severe. Take any nice LI suburb like Manhasset or Oyster Bay. There are legit “townies” with DUIs, eight kids, no college, pick ups, and they become grandparents in their late 30s. When you go to the more middle of the road towns it’s gets more common.
Okay, well you didn't just have to spend an two hours of a college reunion with a snooby bore from Greenwich. Okay, that's Connecticut, not Westchester, but same thing.
Anonymous wrote: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.
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-.
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.
The smartest, most successful people on the planet (rich New Yorkers) send their kids to private. Are they dumb or delusional for doing so? If you have the means, do likewise. And public can be fine, but please don't tell us it is known for less bureaucracy, smaller classes, more advanced material, and better networking than the TTs.
Again, people are making these ridiculous, very absolute statements. The world is not so black and white. Each has its pros and cons. Private has smaller classes, great resources, and usually more flexibility. And the resources of NYC. Some publics because of their size can offer more classes, more exposure to the real world, plenty of academic rigor, etc. They also have more government bureaucracy and less flexibility (which isn't always a bad thing, but often is)
I grew up in a very nice NJ suburb (but not Summit or Millburn, which are the two people like to cite). I went to high school with the children of several PhD Bell Labs researchers (look it up if you don't know it), multiple Columbia and NYU professors, and partners at top law firms. I did not grow up in Princeton but there are lots of incredibly smart Princeton professors and IAS researchers who send their kids to public schools in the area. There are plenty of very bright, successful (not sure how you define that) people who choose to live in the suburbs for whatever reasons. So these absolutist statements that all the smart people are in NYC are ignorant.
And looking at medians or means or whatever else for these schools is useless. Academically I lived in a bubble with the other kids who were at the top of my class. And those kids were just as smart and have accomplished just as much as the NYC private TT alums of my generation. But there were plenty of kids who were not as bright or motivated. And in HS these kids were not in my academic classes. And being exposed to them in homeroom, gym, activities, sports teams, etc. was a great life experience for me. And it has led me to learn to not be as narrow minded and judgy as some of the posters here who refuse to acknowledge anything good about the suburbs. Things have definitely changed at schools like this since then, probably more for the worse than the better (see how I can admit that my side is not without holes - try it sometime). But they still have a lot to offer for a highly motivated student and they will still do well, get into excellent schools and achieve there.
Note that I write this as a parent of a NYC private school student, who chose this school over SHSAT schools after being in excellent NYC public lower schools. So I have seen it all. Have you?
Yes, I went through public school system in Princeton. I got a very good education. Even so, inferior to what my kids got in private school in every respect. I also sent my kids to a wealthy suburban public elementary (rated 10/10 on best schools). Saw first hand that they were abandoning tracking, which is also happening in DC area schools and discussed frequently on this board (and being implemented by Mamdani in NY). Heard teachers complaining about curriculum being scripted by central office that they could not deviate from. Saw my kids spend lots of classroom time preparing for yearly state proficiency tests, even doing mock questions on a regular basis. Neither my kids or I had a class size smaller than 25 kids.
OP here, thank you so much for sharing this. I believe your experience is probably the most instructive to the choice we're evaluating (Princeton public vs. NYC TT). I just have two questions: 1. Do you feel that the educational experience in Princeton publics would have materially changed since you had attended (e.g. less tracking, more ESL / special needs, etc.)? 2. Do you feel that the degree to which your children's experience in private school has been better than public (in learning environment, learned material, network benefits, etc.) is dramatic enough to lead to definitively different life outcomes?
We're really struggling with the decision. We (but not the kids) prefer the suburban lifestyle but it'd really kill us to know that we sacrificed something that could have been very positively significant for their life trajectory, especially since we can comfortable afford the tuition.
Yes, I feel that public school today is materially different than three decades ago. The biggest difference is teaching to the test, I went to school in the days before No Child Left Behind, so we didn’t “practice” or learn things for the yearly state assessments, and APs were not a big thing, so teachers could design the curriculum for advanced classes themselves. ESL has grown a ton in Princeton, there was always a very small low income population, but no real Hispanic population, now it is almost ten percent of the high school population, nearly all recent immigrants. Special needs were not mainstreamed, I really think, for better or worse, that handling kids with behavior problems, whether normal track or special needs, takes a lot of teacher time. It just isn’t possible to remove kids from the classroom anymore. Private schools are usually pretty quick to suspend kids or to counsel them out. There is a real grinder population at the high school level that didn’t exist when I was there — the larger area has become very popular with highly ambitious, highly educated immigrants because of the quality of the public schools. High school suicides are an issue, not necessarily limited to Princeton, but also at the West Windsor and other local highly regarded public schools
Who can say what makes a material difference in a kid’s life? I intended to keep my kids in public school through at least elementary, bought a house zoned for the highest regarded elementary in our area, and pulled my kids before the oldest finished. As I said before, Princeton has many local private schools, some of which are excellent, so you have that as a back up.
Okay so if we understand you ....you want to remove yourself and your kids from the special needs population, the immigrant population both spanish-speaking and non-spanish-speaking, the "grinder" population....I guess that leaves the affluent white folks? Isn't that already who you're currently hanging with I don't know late private school? So why are you going through the hassle of moving?
Not the PP, but wow do you really have to be this toxic?
For context, I'm both Asian and had a younger sibling with autism who I helped raise for much of my own childhood. I've actually never believed in integrating special needs kids wholesale and certainly would not want my own kids in a class where the teacher would be stretched between accommodating someone like my sibling and my kids at the same time. I literally would not know nor could I imagine how that could be done.
Secondly, as an Asian parent who 100% believes in setting high expectations the immigrant grinder mindset is great at achieving a high grades but not so much when it comes to actually learning or developing critical thinking. Take it from someone who have seen peers literally on IV drip in order to stay up and prep for the college entrance exam, you do not want this.
Ok. Public schools are funded by all of the tax payers. When different groups are getting different treatment and different opportunities, that also causes a lot of issues. They need to support struggling students and enrich the advanced students. There is no "counseling out" of any eligible child, nor should there be.
If poster come on here raving about the best and most successful people in the world go to nyc private schools, they should expect some pushback and they deserve it .
What is untrue about that statement? UHNW people disproportionately send their children to private schools and they disproportionately live in NYC.
Yes! They went to those schools because they are the greatest and their kids are the greatest and go to those schools and then their kids are going to be the greatest and go to those schools. These folks need to avoid public schools.
No one is more insular and parochial than rich Manhattanites (proud transplant here). The lack of empathy and curiosity in the average TT parent is the reason why we have no interest in independent schools despite being, by some measures, professionally succesful and able to afford them.
“No one”? Try the Amish or orthodox. Or even your average Long Island or NJ town.
Don't forget Westchester.
True with Westchester, although less severe. Take any nice LI suburb like Manhasset or Oyster Bay. There are legit “townies” with DUIs, eight kids, no college, pick ups, and they become grandparents in their late 30s. When you go to the more middle of the road towns it’s gets more common.
Okay, well you didn't just have to spend a two hours of a college reunion with a snooby bore from Greenwich. Okay, that's Connecticut, not Westchester, but same thing.
Most of Greenwich is very middle class with sub 2mm houses and condos. They have plenty of townies and most residents couldn’t afford Brunswick
Anonymous wrote:Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city and discuss it than the reverse, because there’s a whole range of passable suburbs with decent education that goes beyond what is mentioned here (Scarsdale Milburn etc, which is a very narrow slice of suburbia)
I dislike the suburbs but this just isn't true. I can easily afford living in the city, independent school etc. but if I could move to a rural area in the mountains I would do it in a heartbeat. Not everyone is enamored with city life.
So you dislike the suburbs and wouldn’t move to the city despite having the means. Guess you’re a tougher than average customer
I live in Manhattan and like it fine, but I love being out in nature more. I think there are a lot of people like me who are tied to the city for professional reasons but would move if they could work fully remote or retire early. Many of my friends in tech did just that after the pandemic.
The question here isn’t city or move to Jackson WY or Woodstock VT. It is tristate suburbs or the city.
The post I was replying to said:
"Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city." I think that just isn't true - most people in the U.S. do not like city life and prefer to be near but not in the city. Is it so hard to believe that NYC (Manhattan) isn't the center of the universe?
Most cities aren’t like NY, which is singular. Suburbs in most metros are closer to downtown and more expensive than the cities themselves, residents weren’t priced out. People in Huntington don’t commute 90 minutes door to door each way because they prefer the suburbs. Likewise Darien and Bedford. Ply a housewife with two or three cocktails and she’ll talk about how much she hates it
Everyone I know (including close friends) who moved to the suburbs moved there because they disliked living in the city. Of course, they had the means to move to a town with a decent commute and in some cases maintained a pied-a-terre in the city, but they genuinely prefer their life for themselves and their kids in the suburbs. They like having a car and their kids being able to do sports. They like the sense of -community the suburbs provides. They like spending $2 - $5mm on a house with a pool and acreage and not a shitty 3 bedroom co-op with a fascist board. Is that really so hard to believe? I wouldn't move there but most people really do like living in the suburbs.
Anonymous wrote: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.
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-.
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.
The smartest, most successful people on the planet (rich New Yorkers) send their kids to private. Are they dumb or delusional for doing so? If you have the means, do likewise. And public can be fine, but please don't tell us it is known for less bureaucracy, smaller classes, more advanced material, and better networking than the TTs.
Again, people are making these ridiculous, very absolute statements. The world is not so black and white. Each has its pros and cons. Private has smaller classes, great resources, and usually more flexibility. And the resources of NYC. Some publics because of their size can offer more classes, more exposure to the real world, plenty of academic rigor, etc. They also have more government bureaucracy and less flexibility (which isn't always a bad thing, but often is)
I grew up in a very nice NJ suburb (but not Summit or Millburn, which are the two people like to cite). I went to high school with the children of several PhD Bell Labs researchers (look it up if you don't know it), multiple Columbia and NYU professors, and partners at top law firms. I did not grow up in Princeton but there are lots of incredibly smart Princeton professors and IAS researchers who send their kids to public schools in the area. There are plenty of very bright, successful (not sure how you define that) people who choose to live in the suburbs for whatever reasons. So these absolutist statements that all the smart people are in NYC are ignorant.
And looking at medians or means or whatever else for these schools is useless. Academically I lived in a bubble with the other kids who were at the top of my class. And those kids were just as smart and have accomplished just as much as the NYC private TT alums of my generation. But there were plenty of kids who were not as bright or motivated. And in HS these kids were not in my academic classes. And being exposed to them in homeroom, gym, activities, sports teams, etc. was a great life experience for me. And it has led me to learn to not be as narrow minded and judgy as some of the posters here who refuse to acknowledge anything good about the suburbs. Things have definitely changed at schools like this since then, probably more for the worse than the better (see how I can admit that my side is not without holes - try it sometime). But they still have a lot to offer for a highly motivated student and they will still do well, get into excellent schools and achieve there.
Note that I write this as a parent of a NYC private school student, who chose this school over SHSAT schools after being in excellent NYC public lower schools. So I have seen it all. Have you?
Yes, I went through public school system in Princeton. I got a very good education. Even so, inferior to what my kids got in private school in every respect. I also sent my kids to a wealthy suburban public elementary (rated 10/10 on best schools). Saw first hand that they were abandoning tracking, which is also happening in DC area schools and discussed frequently on this board (and being implemented by Mamdani in NY). Heard teachers complaining about curriculum being scripted by central office that they could not deviate from. Saw my kids spend lots of classroom time preparing for yearly state proficiency tests, even doing mock questions on a regular basis. Neither my kids or I had a class size smaller than 25 kids.
OP here, thank you so much for sharing this. I believe your experience is probably the most instructive to the choice we're evaluating (Princeton public vs. NYC TT). I just have two questions: 1. Do you feel that the educational experience in Princeton publics would have materially changed since you had attended (e.g. less tracking, more ESL / special needs, etc.)? 2. Do you feel that the degree to which your children's experience in private school has been better than public (in learning environment, learned material, network benefits, etc.) is dramatic enough to lead to definitively different life outcomes?
We're really struggling with the decision. We (but not the kids) prefer the suburban lifestyle but it'd really kill us to know that we sacrificed something that could have been very positively significant for their life trajectory, especially since we can comfortable afford the tuition.
Yes, I feel that public school today is materially different than three decades ago. The biggest difference is teaching to the test, I went to school in the days before No Child Left Behind, so we didn’t “practice” or learn things for the yearly state assessments, and APs were not a big thing, so teachers could design the curriculum for advanced classes themselves. ESL has grown a ton in Princeton, there was always a very small low income population, but no real Hispanic population, now it is almost ten percent of the high school population, nearly all recent immigrants. Special needs were not mainstreamed, I really think, for better or worse, that handling kids with behavior problems, whether normal track or special needs, takes a lot of teacher time. It just isn’t possible to remove kids from the classroom anymore. Private schools are usually pretty quick to suspend kids or to counsel them out. There is a real grinder population at the high school level that didn’t exist when I was there — the larger area has become very popular with highly ambitious, highly educated immigrants because of the quality of the public schools. High school suicides are an issue, not necessarily limited to Princeton, but also at the West Windsor and other local highly regarded public schools
Who can say what makes a material difference in a kid’s life? I intended to keep my kids in public school through at least elementary, bought a house zoned for the highest regarded elementary in our area, and pulled my kids before the oldest finished. As I said before, Princeton has many local private schools, some of which are excellent, so you have that as a back up.
Okay so if we understand you ....you want to remove yourself and your kids from the special needs population, the immigrant population both spanish-speaking and non-spanish-speaking, the "grinder" population....I guess that leaves the affluent white folks? Isn't that already who you're currently hanging with I don't know late private school? So why are you going through the hassle of moving?
Not the PP, but wow do you really have to be this toxic?
For context, I'm both Asian and had a younger sibling with autism who I helped raise for much of my own childhood. I've actually never believed in integrating special needs kids wholesale and certainly would not want my own kids in a class where the teacher would be stretched between accommodating someone like my sibling and my kids at the same time. I literally would not know nor could I imagine how that could be done.
Secondly, as an Asian parent who 100% believes in setting high expectations the immigrant grinder mindset is great at achieving a high grades but not so much when it comes to actually learning or developing critical thinking. Take it from someone who have seen peers literally on IV drip in order to stay up and prep for the college entrance exam, you do not want this.
Ok. Public schools are funded by all of the tax payers. When different groups are getting different treatment and different opportunities, that also causes a lot of issues. They need to support struggling students and enrich the advanced students. There is no "counseling out" of any eligible child, nor should there be.
If poster come on here raving about the best and most successful people in the world go to nyc private schools, they should expect some pushback and they deserve it .
What is untrue about that statement? UHNW people disproportionately send their children to private schools and they disproportionately live in NYC.
Yes! They went to those schools because they are the greatest and their kids are the greatest and go to those schools and then their kids are going to be the greatest and go to those schools. These folks need to avoid public schools.
No one is more insular and parochial than rich Manhattanites (proud transplant here). The lack of empathy and curiosity in the average TT parent is the reason why we have no interest in independent schools despite being, by some measures, professionally succesful and able to afford them.
“No one”? Try the Amish or orthodox. Or even your average Long Island or NJ town.
Don't forget Westchester.
True with Westchester, although less severe. Take any nice LI suburb like Manhasset or Oyster Bay. There are legit “townies” with DUIs, eight kids, no college, pick ups, and they become grandparents in their late 30s. When you go to the more middle of the road towns it’s gets more common.
Okay, well you didn't just have to spend a two hours of a college reunion with a snooby bore from Greenwich. Okay, that's Connecticut, not Westchester, but same thing.
Most of Greenwich is very middle class with sub 2mm houses and condos. They have plenty of townies and most residents couldn’t afford Brunswick
What are you from Westchester? It's nice, but it's a wealthy suburb of Manhattan like Connecticut and New Jersey and Long Island.
Anonymous wrote:Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city and discuss it than the reverse, because there’s a whole range of passable suburbs with decent education that goes beyond what is mentioned here (Scarsdale Milburn etc, which is a very narrow slice of suburbia)
I dislike the suburbs but this just isn't true. I can easily afford living in the city, independent school etc. but if I could move to a rural area in the mountains I would do it in a heartbeat. Not everyone is enamored with city life.
So you dislike the suburbs and wouldn’t move to the city despite having the means. Guess you’re a tougher than average customer
I live in Manhattan and like it fine, but I love being out in nature more. I think there are a lot of people like me who are tied to the city for professional reasons but would move if they could work fully remote or retire early. Many of my friends in tech did just that after the pandemic.
The question here isn’t city or move to Jackson WY or Woodstock VT. It is tristate suburbs or the city.
The post I was replying to said:
"Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city." I think that just isn't true - most people in the U.S. do not like city life and prefer to be near but not in the city. Is it so hard to believe that NYC (Manhattan) isn't the center of the universe?
Most cities aren’t like NY, which is singular. Suburbs in most metros are closer to downtown and more expensive than the cities themselves, residents weren’t priced out. People in Huntington don’t commute 90 minutes door to door each way because they prefer the suburbs. Likewise Darien and Bedford. Ply a housewife with two or three cocktails and she’ll talk about how much she hates it
Again, you write in huge generalities like an expert. There are plenty of people who do prefer the suburbs. Sorry you have never met one. A few years ago I had a neighbor in Manhattan. He grew up in Manhattan with huge generational wealth. TT school, boarding school, etc. My neighbors were great parents to their kids - very involved, took them to the park and actually played with them, etc. He moved to the suburbs. His wife is not from NYC so she admittedly might have been driving part of this. But I think he wanted something different for his kids. And he was able to work at least some time in the burbs which makes it much more enjoyable than a full time commute.
Again. Lots of smart, wealthy, accomplished people truly enjoy the suburbs and actively choose to be there. I do not understand why this is so hard for people to understand. There are definitely pros and cons - it is not perfect. And there are definitely people there who wish they were in the city. And there are also families in the city who wish they were in the suburbs (though likely fewer). But to act like these people do not exist and/or that they are idiots for making this choice is ridiculous.
Anonymous wrote:Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city and discuss it than the reverse, because there’s a whole range of passable suburbs with decent education that goes beyond what is mentioned here (Scarsdale Milburn etc, which is a very narrow slice of suburbia)
I dislike the suburbs but this just isn't true. I can easily afford living in the city, independent school etc. but if I could move to a rural area in the mountains I would do it in a heartbeat. Not everyone is enamored with city life.
So you dislike the suburbs and wouldn’t move to the city despite having the means. Guess you’re a tougher than average customer
I live in Manhattan and like it fine, but I love being out in nature more. I think there are a lot of people like me who are tied to the city for professional reasons but would move if they could work fully remote or retire early. Many of my friends in tech did just that after the pandemic.
The question here isn’t city or move to Jackson WY or Woodstock VT. It is tristate suburbs or the city.
The post I was replying to said:
"Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city." I think that just isn't true - most people in the U.S. do not like city life and prefer to be near but not in the city. Is it so hard to believe that NYC (Manhattan) isn't the center of the universe?
Most cities aren’t like NY, which is singular. Suburbs in most metros are closer to downtown and more expensive than the cities themselves, residents weren’t priced out. People in Huntington don’t commute 90 minutes door to door each way because they prefer the suburbs. Likewise Darien and Bedford. Ply a housewife with two or three cocktails and she’ll talk about how much she hates it
Everyone I know (including close friends) who moved to the suburbs moved there because they disliked living in the city. Of course, they had the means to move to a town with a decent commute and in some cases maintained a pied-a-terre in the city, but they genuinely prefer their life for themselves and their kids in the suburbs. They like having a car and their kids being able to do sports. They like the sense of -community the suburbs provides. They like spending $2 - $5mm on a house with a pool and acreage and not a shitty 3 bedroom co-op with a fascist board. Is that really so hard to believe? I wouldn't move there but most people really do like living in the suburbs.
You should be able to afford a car in the city. And there are sports in the city, pretty much every single one including hockey at a high level
Anonymous wrote: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.
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-.
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.
The smartest, most successful people on the planet (rich New Yorkers) send their kids to private. Are they dumb or delusional for doing so? If you have the means, do likewise. And public can be fine, but please don't tell us it is known for less bureaucracy, smaller classes, more advanced material, and better networking than the TTs.
Again, people are making these ridiculous, very absolute statements. The world is not so black and white. Each has its pros and cons. Private has smaller classes, great resources, and usually more flexibility. And the resources of NYC. Some publics because of their size can offer more classes, more exposure to the real world, plenty of academic rigor, etc. They also have more government bureaucracy and less flexibility (which isn't always a bad thing, but often is)
I grew up in a very nice NJ suburb (but not Summit or Millburn, which are the two people like to cite). I went to high school with the children of several PhD Bell Labs researchers (look it up if you don't know it), multiple Columbia and NYU professors, and partners at top law firms. I did not grow up in Princeton but there are lots of incredibly smart Princeton professors and IAS researchers who send their kids to public schools in the area. There are plenty of very bright, successful (not sure how you define that) people who choose to live in the suburbs for whatever reasons. So these absolutist statements that all the smart people are in NYC are ignorant.
And looking at medians or means or whatever else for these schools is useless. Academically I lived in a bubble with the other kids who were at the top of my class. And those kids were just as smart and have accomplished just as much as the NYC private TT alums of my generation. But there were plenty of kids who were not as bright or motivated. And in HS these kids were not in my academic classes. And being exposed to them in homeroom, gym, activities, sports teams, etc. was a great life experience for me. And it has led me to learn to not be as narrow minded and judgy as some of the posters here who refuse to acknowledge anything good about the suburbs. Things have definitely changed at schools like this since then, probably more for the worse than the better (see how I can admit that my side is not without holes - try it sometime). But they still have a lot to offer for a highly motivated student and they will still do well, get into excellent schools and achieve there.
Note that I write this as a parent of a NYC private school student, who chose this school over SHSAT schools after being in excellent NYC public lower schools. So I have seen it all. Have you?
Yes, I went through public school system in Princeton. I got a very good education. Even so, inferior to what my kids got in private school in every respect. I also sent my kids to a wealthy suburban public elementary (rated 10/10 on best schools). Saw first hand that they were abandoning tracking, which is also happening in DC area schools and discussed frequently on this board (and being implemented by Mamdani in NY). Heard teachers complaining about curriculum being scripted by central office that they could not deviate from. Saw my kids spend lots of classroom time preparing for yearly state proficiency tests, even doing mock questions on a regular basis. Neither my kids or I had a class size smaller than 25 kids.
OP here, thank you so much for sharing this. I believe your experience is probably the most instructive to the choice we're evaluating (Princeton public vs. NYC TT). I just have two questions: 1. Do you feel that the educational experience in Princeton publics would have materially changed since you had attended (e.g. less tracking, more ESL / special needs, etc.)? 2. Do you feel that the degree to which your children's experience in private school has been better than public (in learning environment, learned material, network benefits, etc.) is dramatic enough to lead to definitively different life outcomes?
We're really struggling with the decision. We (but not the kids) prefer the suburban lifestyle but it'd really kill us to know that we sacrificed something that could have been very positively significant for their life trajectory, especially since we can comfortable afford the tuition.
Yes, I feel that public school today is materially different than three decades ago. The biggest difference is teaching to the test, I went to school in the days before No Child Left Behind, so we didn’t “practice” or learn things for the yearly state assessments, and APs were not a big thing, so teachers could design the curriculum for advanced classes themselves. ESL has grown a ton in Princeton, there was always a very small low income population, but no real Hispanic population, now it is almost ten percent of the high school population, nearly all recent immigrants. Special needs were not mainstreamed, I really think, for better or worse, that handling kids with behavior problems, whether normal track or special needs, takes a lot of teacher time. It just isn’t possible to remove kids from the classroom anymore. Private schools are usually pretty quick to suspend kids or to counsel them out. There is a real grinder population at the high school level that didn’t exist when I was there — the larger area has become very popular with highly ambitious, highly educated immigrants because of the quality of the public schools. High school suicides are an issue, not necessarily limited to Princeton, but also at the West Windsor and other local highly regarded public schools
Who can say what makes a material difference in a kid’s life? I intended to keep my kids in public school through at least elementary, bought a house zoned for the highest regarded elementary in our area, and pulled my kids before the oldest finished. As I said before, Princeton has many local private schools, some of which are excellent, so you have that as a back up.
Okay so if we understand you ....you want to remove yourself and your kids from the special needs population, the immigrant population both spanish-speaking and non-spanish-speaking, the "grinder" population....I guess that leaves the affluent white folks? Isn't that already who you're currently hanging with I don't know late private school? So why are you going through the hassle of moving?
Not the PP, but wow do you really have to be this toxic?
For context, I'm both Asian and had a younger sibling with autism who I helped raise for much of my own childhood. I've actually never believed in integrating special needs kids wholesale and certainly would not want my own kids in a class where the teacher would be stretched between accommodating someone like my sibling and my kids at the same time. I literally would not know nor could I imagine how that could be done.
Secondly, as an Asian parent who 100% believes in setting high expectations the immigrant grinder mindset is great at achieving a high grades but not so much when it comes to actually learning or developing critical thinking. Take it from someone who have seen peers literally on IV drip in order to stay up and prep for the college entrance exam, you do not want this.
Ok. Public schools are funded by all of the tax payers. When different groups are getting different treatment and different opportunities, that also causes a lot of issues. They need to support struggling students and enrich the advanced students. There is no "counseling out" of any eligible child, nor should there be.
If poster come on here raving about the best and most successful people in the world go to nyc private schools, they should expect some pushback and they deserve it .
What is untrue about that statement? UHNW people disproportionately send their children to private schools and they disproportionately live in NYC.
Yes! They went to those schools because they are the greatest and their kids are the greatest and go to those schools and then their kids are going to be the greatest and go to those schools. These folks need to avoid public schools.
No one is more insular and parochial than rich Manhattanites (proud transplant here). The lack of empathy and curiosity in the average TT parent is the reason why we have no interest in independent schools despite being, by some measures, professionally succesful and able to afford them.
“No one”? Try the Amish or orthodox. Or even your average Long Island or NJ town.
Don't forget Westchester.
True with Westchester, although less severe. Take any nice LI suburb like Manhasset or Oyster Bay. There are legit “townies” with DUIs, eight kids, no college, pick ups, and they become grandparents in their late 30s. When you go to the more middle of the road towns it’s gets more common.
Okay, well you didn't just have to spend a two hours of a college reunion with a snooby bore from Greenwich. Okay, that's Connecticut, not Westchester, but same thing.
Most of Greenwich is very middle class with sub 2mm houses and condos. They have plenty of townies and most residents couldn’t afford Brunswick
What are you from Westchester? It's nice, but it's a wealthy suburb of Manhattan like Connecticut and New Jersey and Long Island.
Only an ignorant city person would completely fail to recognize that there are a lot of pretty major differences between Westchester, NJ, CT and LI, and within each of those. You couldn't get me anywhere near most of LI but there are a few towns I could tolerate. Westchester and NJ are better but again, you have to pick your spots. CT is nice but too far.
Anonymous wrote:Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city and discuss it than the reverse, because there’s a whole range of passable suburbs with decent education that goes beyond what is mentioned here (Scarsdale Milburn etc, which is a very narrow slice of suburbia)
I dislike the suburbs but this just isn't true. I can easily afford living in the city, independent school etc. but if I could move to a rural area in the mountains I would do it in a heartbeat. Not everyone is enamored with city life.
So you dislike the suburbs and wouldn’t move to the city despite having the means. Guess you’re a tougher than average customer
I live in Manhattan and like it fine, but I love being out in nature more. I think there are a lot of people like me who are tied to the city for professional reasons but would move if they could work fully remote or retire early. Many of my friends in tech did just that after the pandemic.
The question here isn’t city or move to Jackson WY or Woodstock VT. It is tristate suburbs or the city.
The post I was replying to said:
"Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city." I think that just isn't true - most people in the U.S. do not like city life and prefer to be near but not in the city. Is it so hard to believe that NYC (Manhattan) isn't the center of the universe?
Most cities aren’t like NY, which is singular. Suburbs in most metros are closer to downtown and more expensive than the cities themselves, residents weren’t priced out. People in Huntington don’t commute 90 minutes door to door each way because they prefer the suburbs. Likewise Darien and Bedford. Ply a housewife with two or three cocktails and she’ll talk about how much she hates it
Everyone I know (including close friends) who moved to the suburbs moved there because they disliked living in the city. Of course, they had the means to move to a town with a decent commute and in some cases maintained a pied-a-terre in the city, but they genuinely prefer their life for themselves and their kids in the suburbs. They like having a car and their kids being able to do sports. They like the sense of -community the suburbs provides. They like spending $2 - $5mm on a house with a pool and acreage and not a shitty 3 bedroom co-op with a fascist board. Is that really so hard to believe? I wouldn't move there but most people really do like living in the suburbs.
You should be able to afford a car in the city. And there are sports in the city, pretty much every single one including hockey at a high level
You can get a car but going anywhere in it within the city is a huge ordeal, finding parking in parts of Manhattan is nigh impossible. And the sports at TT schools are laughable (apart from the hill schools which are pretty suburban).
Anonymous wrote: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.
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-.
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.
The smartest, most successful people on the planet (rich New Yorkers) send their kids to private. Are they dumb or delusional for doing so? If you have the means, do likewise. And public can be fine, but please don't tell us it is known for less bureaucracy, smaller classes, more advanced material, and better networking than the TTs.
Again, people are making these ridiculous, very absolute statements. The world is not so black and white. Each has its pros and cons. Private has smaller classes, great resources, and usually more flexibility. And the resources of NYC. Some publics because of their size can offer more classes, more exposure to the real world, plenty of academic rigor, etc. They also have more government bureaucracy and less flexibility (which isn't always a bad thing, but often is)
I grew up in a very nice NJ suburb (but not Summit or Millburn, which are the two people like to cite). I went to high school with the children of several PhD Bell Labs researchers (look it up if you don't know it), multiple Columbia and NYU professors, and partners at top law firms. I did not grow up in Princeton but there are lots of incredibly smart Princeton professors and IAS researchers who send their kids to public schools in the area. There are plenty of very bright, successful (not sure how you define that) people who choose to live in the suburbs for whatever reasons. So these absolutist statements that all the smart people are in NYC are ignorant.
And looking at medians or means or whatever else for these schools is useless. Academically I lived in a bubble with the other kids who were at the top of my class. And those kids were just as smart and have accomplished just as much as the NYC private TT alums of my generation. But there were plenty of kids who were not as bright or motivated. And in HS these kids were not in my academic classes. And being exposed to them in homeroom, gym, activities, sports teams, etc. was a great life experience for me. And it has led me to learn to not be as narrow minded and judgy as some of the posters here who refuse to acknowledge anything good about the suburbs. Things have definitely changed at schools like this since then, probably more for the worse than the better (see how I can admit that my side is not without holes - try it sometime). But they still have a lot to offer for a highly motivated student and they will still do well, get into excellent schools and achieve there.
Note that I write this as a parent of a NYC private school student, who chose this school over SHSAT schools after being in excellent NYC public lower schools. So I have seen it all. Have you?
Yes, I went through public school system in Princeton. I got a very good education. Even so, inferior to what my kids got in private school in every respect. I also sent my kids to a wealthy suburban public elementary (rated 10/10 on best schools). Saw first hand that they were abandoning tracking, which is also happening in DC area schools and discussed frequently on this board (and being implemented by Mamdani in NY). Heard teachers complaining about curriculum being scripted by central office that they could not deviate from. Saw my kids spend lots of classroom time preparing for yearly state proficiency tests, even doing mock questions on a regular basis. Neither my kids or I had a class size smaller than 25 kids.
OP here, thank you so much for sharing this. I believe your experience is probably the most instructive to the choice we're evaluating (Princeton public vs. NYC TT). I just have two questions: 1. Do you feel that the educational experience in Princeton publics would have materially changed since you had attended (e.g. less tracking, more ESL / special needs, etc.)? 2. Do you feel that the degree to which your children's experience in private school has been better than public (in learning environment, learned material, network benefits, etc.) is dramatic enough to lead to definitively different life outcomes?
We're really struggling with the decision. We (but not the kids) prefer the suburban lifestyle but it'd really kill us to know that we sacrificed something that could have been very positively significant for their life trajectory, especially since we can comfortable afford the tuition.
Yes, I feel that public school today is materially different than three decades ago. The biggest difference is teaching to the test, I went to school in the days before No Child Left Behind, so we didn’t “practice” or learn things for the yearly state assessments, and APs were not a big thing, so teachers could design the curriculum for advanced classes themselves. ESL has grown a ton in Princeton, there was always a very small low income population, but no real Hispanic population, now it is almost ten percent of the high school population, nearly all recent immigrants. Special needs were not mainstreamed, I really think, for better or worse, that handling kids with behavior problems, whether normal track or special needs, takes a lot of teacher time. It just isn’t possible to remove kids from the classroom anymore. Private schools are usually pretty quick to suspend kids or to counsel them out. There is a real grinder population at the high school level that didn’t exist when I was there — the larger area has become very popular with highly ambitious, highly educated immigrants because of the quality of the public schools. High school suicides are an issue, not necessarily limited to Princeton, but also at the West Windsor and other local highly regarded public schools
Who can say what makes a material difference in a kid’s life? I intended to keep my kids in public school through at least elementary, bought a house zoned for the highest regarded elementary in our area, and pulled my kids before the oldest finished. As I said before, Princeton has many local private schools, some of which are excellent, so you have that as a back up.
Okay so if we understand you ....you want to remove yourself and your kids from the special needs population, the immigrant population both spanish-speaking and non-spanish-speaking, the "grinder" population....I guess that leaves the affluent white folks? Isn't that already who you're currently hanging with I don't know late private school? So why are you going through the hassle of moving?
Not the PP, but wow do you really have to be this toxic?
For context, I'm both Asian and had a younger sibling with autism who I helped raise for much of my own childhood. I've actually never believed in integrating special needs kids wholesale and certainly would not want my own kids in a class where the teacher would be stretched between accommodating someone like my sibling and my kids at the same time. I literally would not know nor could I imagine how that could be done.
Secondly, as an Asian parent who 100% believes in setting high expectations the immigrant grinder mindset is great at achieving a high grades but not so much when it comes to actually learning or developing critical thinking. Take it from someone who have seen peers literally on IV drip in order to stay up and prep for the college entrance exam, you do not want this.
Ok. Public schools are funded by all of the tax payers. When different groups are getting different treatment and different opportunities, that also causes a lot of issues. They need to support struggling students and enrich the advanced students. There is no "counseling out" of any eligible child, nor should there be.
If poster come on here raving about the best and most successful people in the world go to nyc private schools, they should expect some pushback and they deserve it .
What is untrue about that statement? UHNW people disproportionately send their children to private schools and they disproportionately live in NYC.
Yes! They went to those schools because they are the greatest and their kids are the greatest and go to those schools and then their kids are going to be the greatest and go to those schools. These folks need to avoid public schools.
No one is more insular and parochial than rich Manhattanites (proud transplant here). The lack of empathy and curiosity in the average TT parent is the reason why we have no interest in independent schools despite being, by some measures, professionally succesful and able to afford them.
“No one”? Try the Amish or orthodox. Or even your average Long Island or NJ town.
Don't forget Westchester.
True with Westchester, although less severe. Take any nice LI suburb like Manhasset or Oyster Bay. There are legit “townies” with DUIs, eight kids, no college, pick ups, and they become grandparents in their late 30s. When you go to the more middle of the road towns it’s gets more common.
Okay, well you didn't just have to spend a two hours of a college reunion with a snooby bore from Greenwich. Okay, that's Connecticut, not Westchester, but same thing.
Most of Greenwich is very middle class with sub 2mm houses and condos. They have plenty of townies and most residents couldn’t afford Brunswick
What are you from Westchester? It's nice, but it's a wealthy suburb of Manhattan like Connecticut and New Jersey and Long Island.
Only an ignorant city person would completely fail to recognize that there are a lot of pretty major differences between Westchester, NJ, CT and LI, and within each of those. You couldn't get me anywhere near most of LI but there are a few towns I could tolerate. Westchester and NJ are better but again, you have to pick your spots. CT is nice but too far.
Okay sure. Line up the moms and dads from Rye, Manhasset, Short Hills and Greenwich and and we'll see if you can pick who's who.
Anonymous wrote: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.
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-.
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.
The smartest, most successful people on the planet (rich New Yorkers) send their kids to private. Are they dumb or delusional for doing so? If you have the means, do likewise. And public can be fine, but please don't tell us it is known for less bureaucracy, smaller classes, more advanced material, and better networking than the TTs.
Again, people are making these ridiculous, very absolute statements. The world is not so black and white. Each has its pros and cons. Private has smaller classes, great resources, and usually more flexibility. And the resources of NYC. Some publics because of their size can offer more classes, more exposure to the real world, plenty of academic rigor, etc. They also have more government bureaucracy and less flexibility (which isn't always a bad thing, but often is)
I grew up in a very nice NJ suburb (but not Summit or Millburn, which are the two people like to cite). I went to high school with the children of several PhD Bell Labs researchers (look it up if you don't know it), multiple Columbia and NYU professors, and partners at top law firms. I did not grow up in Princeton but there are lots of incredibly smart Princeton professors and IAS researchers who send their kids to public schools in the area. There are plenty of very bright, successful (not sure how you define that) people who choose to live in the suburbs for whatever reasons. So these absolutist statements that all the smart people are in NYC are ignorant.
And looking at medians or means or whatever else for these schools is useless. Academically I lived in a bubble with the other kids who were at the top of my class. And those kids were just as smart and have accomplished just as much as the NYC private TT alums of my generation. But there were plenty of kids who were not as bright or motivated. And in HS these kids were not in my academic classes. And being exposed to them in homeroom, gym, activities, sports teams, etc. was a great life experience for me. And it has led me to learn to not be as narrow minded and judgy as some of the posters here who refuse to acknowledge anything good about the suburbs. Things have definitely changed at schools like this since then, probably more for the worse than the better (see how I can admit that my side is not without holes - try it sometime). But they still have a lot to offer for a highly motivated student and they will still do well, get into excellent schools and achieve there.
Note that I write this as a parent of a NYC private school student, who chose this school over SHSAT schools after being in excellent NYC public lower schools. So I have seen it all. Have you?
Yes, I went through public school system in Princeton. I got a very good education. Even so, inferior to what my kids got in private school in every respect. I also sent my kids to a wealthy suburban public elementary (rated 10/10 on best schools). Saw first hand that they were abandoning tracking, which is also happening in DC area schools and discussed frequently on this board (and being implemented by Mamdani in NY). Heard teachers complaining about curriculum being scripted by central office that they could not deviate from. Saw my kids spend lots of classroom time preparing for yearly state proficiency tests, even doing mock questions on a regular basis. Neither my kids or I had a class size smaller than 25 kids.
OP here, thank you so much for sharing this. I believe your experience is probably the most instructive to the choice we're evaluating (Princeton public vs. NYC TT). I just have two questions: 1. Do you feel that the educational experience in Princeton publics would have materially changed since you had attended (e.g. less tracking, more ESL / special needs, etc.)? 2. Do you feel that the degree to which your children's experience in private school has been better than public (in learning environment, learned material, network benefits, etc.) is dramatic enough to lead to definitively different life outcomes?
We're really struggling with the decision. We (but not the kids) prefer the suburban lifestyle but it'd really kill us to know that we sacrificed something that could have been very positively significant for their life trajectory, especially since we can comfortable afford the tuition.
Yes, I feel that public school today is materially different than three decades ago. The biggest difference is teaching to the test, I went to school in the days before No Child Left Behind, so we didn’t “practice” or learn things for the yearly state assessments, and APs were not a big thing, so teachers could design the curriculum for advanced classes themselves. ESL has grown a ton in Princeton, there was always a very small low income population, but no real Hispanic population, now it is almost ten percent of the high school population, nearly all recent immigrants. Special needs were not mainstreamed, I really think, for better or worse, that handling kids with behavior problems, whether normal track or special needs, takes a lot of teacher time. It just isn’t possible to remove kids from the classroom anymore. Private schools are usually pretty quick to suspend kids or to counsel them out. There is a real grinder population at the high school level that didn’t exist when I was there — the larger area has become very popular with highly ambitious, highly educated immigrants because of the quality of the public schools. High school suicides are an issue, not necessarily limited to Princeton, but also at the West Windsor and other local highly regarded public schools
Who can say what makes a material difference in a kid’s life? I intended to keep my kids in public school through at least elementary, bought a house zoned for the highest regarded elementary in our area, and pulled my kids before the oldest finished. As I said before, Princeton has many local private schools, some of which are excellent, so you have that as a back up.
Okay so if we understand you ....you want to remove yourself and your kids from the special needs population, the immigrant population both spanish-speaking and non-spanish-speaking, the "grinder" population....I guess that leaves the affluent white folks? Isn't that already who you're currently hanging with I don't know late private school? So why are you going through the hassle of moving?
Not the PP, but wow do you really have to be this toxic?
For context, I'm both Asian and had a younger sibling with autism who I helped raise for much of my own childhood. I've actually never believed in integrating special needs kids wholesale and certainly would not want my own kids in a class where the teacher would be stretched between accommodating someone like my sibling and my kids at the same time. I literally would not know nor could I imagine how that could be done.
Secondly, as an Asian parent who 100% believes in setting high expectations the immigrant grinder mindset is great at achieving a high grades but not so much when it comes to actually learning or developing critical thinking. Take it from someone who have seen peers literally on IV drip in order to stay up and prep for the college entrance exam, you do not want this.
Ok. Public schools are funded by all of the tax payers. When different groups are getting different treatment and different opportunities, that also causes a lot of issues. They need to support struggling students and enrich the advanced students. There is no "counseling out" of any eligible child, nor should there be.
If poster come on here raving about the best and most successful people in the world go to nyc private schools, they should expect some pushback and they deserve it .
What is untrue about that statement? UHNW people disproportionately send their children to private schools and they disproportionately live in NYC.
Yes! They went to those schools because they are the greatest and their kids are the greatest and go to those schools and then their kids are going to be the greatest and go to those schools. These folks need to avoid public schools.
No one is more insular and parochial than rich Manhattanites (proud transplant here). The lack of empathy and curiosity in the average TT parent is the reason why we have no interest in independent schools despite being, by some measures, professionally succesful and able to afford them.
“No one”? Try the Amish or orthodox. Or even your average Long Island or NJ town.
Don't forget Westchester.
True with Westchester, although less severe. Take any nice LI suburb like Manhasset or Oyster Bay. There are legit “townies” with DUIs, eight kids, no college, pick ups, and they become grandparents in their late 30s. When you go to the more middle of the road towns it’s gets more common.
Okay, well you didn't just have to spend a two hours of a college reunion with a snooby bore from Greenwich. Okay, that's Connecticut, not Westchester, but same thing.
Most of Greenwich is very middle class with sub 2mm houses and condos. They have plenty of townies and most residents couldn’t afford Brunswick
What are you from Westchester? It's nice, but it's a wealthy suburb of Manhattan like Connecticut and New Jersey and Long Island.
Only an ignorant city person would completely fail to recognize that there are a lot of pretty major differences between Westchester, NJ, CT and LI, and within each of those. You couldn't get me anywhere near most of LI but there are a few towns I could tolerate. Westchester and NJ are better but again, you have to pick your spots. CT is nice but too far.
Okay sure. Line up the moms and dads from Rye, Manhasset, Short Hills and Greenwich and and we'll see if you can pick who's who.
Challenge accepted. Not that hard. Though things have changed a bit. Plus if I moved to the burbs I would probably not live in any of those places - possibly Rye but that's it.
I would rather live in a town that is a notch down on the pecking order (which is ridiculous to begin with) where the schools are still very good but not necessarily the best, families are more down to earth but still smart, successful and interesting, the schools are not a competitive nightmare but top kids still get into good colleges, and it doesn't draw those who make all life decisions based on being at the #1 place as ranked by the intelligentsia of DCUM and similar places.
Anonymous wrote:Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city and discuss it than the reverse, because there’s a whole range of passable suburbs with decent education that goes beyond what is mentioned here (Scarsdale Milburn etc, which is a very narrow slice of suburbia)
I dislike the suburbs but this just isn't true. I can easily afford living in the city, independent school etc. but if I could move to a rural area in the mountains I would do it in a heartbeat. Not everyone is enamored with city life.
So you dislike the suburbs and wouldn’t move to the city despite having the means. Guess you’re a tougher than average customer
I live in Manhattan and like it fine, but I love being out in nature more. I think there are a lot of people like me who are tied to the city for professional reasons but would move if they could work fully remote or retire early. Many of my friends in tech did just that after the pandemic.
The question here isn’t city or move to Jackson WY or Woodstock VT. It is tristate suburbs or the city.
The post I was replying to said:
"Suburbs and city are different lifestyles. Most people, if they have the money, choose the city but some don’t. You’ll have way more people in the suburbs want to move back to the city." I think that just isn't true - most people in the U.S. do not like city life and prefer to be near but not in the city. Is it so hard to believe that NYC (Manhattan) isn't the center of the universe?
Most cities aren’t like NY, which is singular. Suburbs in most metros are closer to downtown and more expensive than the cities themselves, residents weren’t priced out. People in Huntington don’t commute 90 minutes door to door each way because they prefer the suburbs. Likewise Darien and Bedford. Ply a housewife with two or three cocktails and she’ll talk about how much she hates it
Everyone I know (including close friends) who moved to the suburbs moved there because they disliked living in the city. Of course, they had the means to move to a town with a decent commute and in some cases maintained a pied-a-terre in the city, but they genuinely prefer their life for themselves and their kids in the suburbs. They like having a car and their kids being able to do sports. They like the sense of -community the suburbs provides. They like spending $2 - $5mm on a house with a pool and acreage and not a shitty 3 bedroom co-op with a fascist board. Is that really so hard to believe? I wouldn't move there but most people really do like living in the suburbs.
You should be able to afford a car in the city. And there are sports in the city, pretty much every single one including hockey at a high level
You can get a car but going anywhere in it within the city is a huge ordeal, finding parking in parts of Manhattan is nigh impossible. And the sports at TT schools are laughable (apart from the hill schools which are pretty suburban).
Anonymous wrote: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.
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-.
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.
The smartest, most successful people on the planet (rich New Yorkers) send their kids to private. Are they dumb or delusional for doing so? If you have the means, do likewise. And public can be fine, but please don't tell us it is known for less bureaucracy, smaller classes, more advanced material, and better networking than the TTs.
Again, people are making these ridiculous, very absolute statements. The world is not so black and white. Each has its pros and cons. Private has smaller classes, great resources, and usually more flexibility. And the resources of NYC. Some publics because of their size can offer more classes, more exposure to the real world, plenty of academic rigor, etc. They also have more government bureaucracy and less flexibility (which isn't always a bad thing, but often is)
I grew up in a very nice NJ suburb (but not Summit or Millburn, which are the two people like to cite). I went to high school with the children of several PhD Bell Labs researchers (look it up if you don't know it), multiple Columbia and NYU professors, and partners at top law firms. I did not grow up in Princeton but there are lots of incredibly smart Princeton professors and IAS researchers who send their kids to public schools in the area. There are plenty of very bright, successful (not sure how you define that) people who choose to live in the suburbs for whatever reasons. So these absolutist statements that all the smart people are in NYC are ignorant.
And looking at medians or means or whatever else for these schools is useless. Academically I lived in a bubble with the other kids who were at the top of my class. And those kids were just as smart and have accomplished just as much as the NYC private TT alums of my generation. But there were plenty of kids who were not as bright or motivated. And in HS these kids were not in my academic classes. And being exposed to them in homeroom, gym, activities, sports teams, etc. was a great life experience for me. And it has led me to learn to not be as narrow minded and judgy as some of the posters here who refuse to acknowledge anything good about the suburbs. Things have definitely changed at schools like this since then, probably more for the worse than the better (see how I can admit that my side is not without holes - try it sometime). But they still have a lot to offer for a highly motivated student and they will still do well, get into excellent schools and achieve there.
Note that I write this as a parent of a NYC private school student, who chose this school over SHSAT schools after being in excellent NYC public lower schools. So I have seen it all. Have you?
Yes, I went through public school system in Princeton. I got a very good education. Even so, inferior to what my kids got in private school in every respect. I also sent my kids to a wealthy suburban public elementary (rated 10/10 on best schools). Saw first hand that they were abandoning tracking, which is also happening in DC area schools and discussed frequently on this board (and being implemented by Mamdani in NY). Heard teachers complaining about curriculum being scripted by central office that they could not deviate from. Saw my kids spend lots of classroom time preparing for yearly state proficiency tests, even doing mock questions on a regular basis. Neither my kids or I had a class size smaller than 25 kids.
OP here, thank you so much for sharing this. I believe your experience is probably the most instructive to the choice we're evaluating (Princeton public vs. NYC TT). I just have two questions: 1. Do you feel that the educational experience in Princeton publics would have materially changed since you had attended (e.g. less tracking, more ESL / special needs, etc.)? 2. Do you feel that the degree to which your children's experience in private school has been better than public (in learning environment, learned material, network benefits, etc.) is dramatic enough to lead to definitively different life outcomes?
We're really struggling with the decision. We (but not the kids) prefer the suburban lifestyle but it'd really kill us to know that we sacrificed something that could have been very positively significant for their life trajectory, especially since we can comfortable afford the tuition.
Yes, I feel that public school today is materially different than three decades ago. The biggest difference is teaching to the test, I went to school in the days before No Child Left Behind, so we didn’t “practice” or learn things for the yearly state assessments, and APs were not a big thing, so teachers could design the curriculum for advanced classes themselves. ESL has grown a ton in Princeton, there was always a very small low income population, but no real Hispanic population, now it is almost ten percent of the high school population, nearly all recent immigrants. Special needs were not mainstreamed, I really think, for better or worse, that handling kids with behavior problems, whether normal track or special needs, takes a lot of teacher time. It just isn’t possible to remove kids from the classroom anymore. Private schools are usually pretty quick to suspend kids or to counsel them out. There is a real grinder population at the high school level that didn’t exist when I was there — the larger area has become very popular with highly ambitious, highly educated immigrants because of the quality of the public schools. High school suicides are an issue, not necessarily limited to Princeton, but also at the West Windsor and other local highly regarded public schools
Who can say what makes a material difference in a kid’s life? I intended to keep my kids in public school through at least elementary, bought a house zoned for the highest regarded elementary in our area, and pulled my kids before the oldest finished. As I said before, Princeton has many local private schools, some of which are excellent, so you have that as a back up.
Okay so if we understand you ....you want to remove yourself and your kids from the special needs population, the immigrant population both spanish-speaking and non-spanish-speaking, the "grinder" population....I guess that leaves the affluent white folks? Isn't that already who you're currently hanging with I don't know late private school? So why are you going through the hassle of moving?
Not the PP, but wow do you really have to be this toxic?
For context, I'm both Asian and had a younger sibling with autism who I helped raise for much of my own childhood. I've actually never believed in integrating special needs kids wholesale and certainly would not want my own kids in a class where the teacher would be stretched between accommodating someone like my sibling and my kids at the same time. I literally would not know nor could I imagine how that could be done.
Secondly, as an Asian parent who 100% believes in setting high expectations the immigrant grinder mindset is great at achieving a high grades but not so much when it comes to actually learning or developing critical thinking. Take it from someone who have seen peers literally on IV drip in order to stay up and prep for the college entrance exam, you do not want this.
Ok. Public schools are funded by all of the tax payers. When different groups are getting different treatment and different opportunities, that also causes a lot of issues. They need to support struggling students and enrich the advanced students. There is no "counseling out" of any eligible child, nor should there be.
If poster come on here raving about the best and most successful people in the world go to nyc private schools, they should expect some pushback and they deserve it .
What is untrue about that statement? UHNW people disproportionately send their children to private schools and they disproportionately live in NYC.
Yes! They went to those schools because they are the greatest and their kids are the greatest and go to those schools and then their kids are going to be the greatest and go to those schools. These folks need to avoid public schools.
No one is more insular and parochial than rich Manhattanites (proud transplant here). The lack of empathy and curiosity in the average TT parent is the reason why we have no interest in independent schools despite being, by some measures, professionally succesful and able to afford them.
“No one”? Try the Amish or orthodox. Or even your average Long Island or NJ town.
Don't forget Westchester.
True with Westchester, although less severe. Take any nice LI suburb like Manhasset or Oyster Bay. There are legit “townies” with DUIs, eight kids, no college, pick ups, and they become grandparents in their late 30s. When you go to the more middle of the road towns it’s gets more common.
Okay, well you didn't just have to spend a two hours of a college reunion with a snooby bore from Greenwich. Okay, that's Connecticut, not Westchester, but same thing.
Most of Greenwich is very middle class with sub 2mm houses and condos. They have plenty of townies and most residents couldn’t afford Brunswick
What are you from Westchester? It's nice, but it's a wealthy suburb of Manhattan like Connecticut and New Jersey and Long Island.
Only an ignorant city person would completely fail to recognize that there are a lot of pretty major differences between Westchester, NJ, CT and LI, and within each of those. You couldn't get me anywhere near most of LI but there are a few towns I could tolerate. Westchester and NJ are better but again, you have to pick your spots. CT is nice but too far.
Okay sure. Line up the moms and dads from Rye, Manhasset, Short Hills and Greenwich and and we'll see if you can pick who's who.
Challenge accepted. Not that hard. Though things have changed a bit. Plus if I moved to the burbs I would probably not live in any of those places - possibly Rye but that's it.
I would rather live in a town that is a notch down on the pecking order (which is ridiculous to begin with) where the schools are still very good but not necessarily the best, families are more down to earth but still smart, successful and interesting, the schools are not a competitive nightmare but top kids still get into good colleges, and it doesn't draw those who make all life decisions based on being at the #1 place as ranked by the intelligentsia of DCUM and similar places.
Okay yes move where you want to move and enjoy it. If you like Rye, go to Rye. I just stand by that in the big scheme of things, these are all wealthy suburbs of New York City with a very good, very well-funded, expensive public schools. That is why people move their families there. Expensive real estate. High taxes. Excellent schools. Same cars. Same clothes. Same vacations. Same boat, Same country club.
And sure some like golf, some like tennis, some like a boat, some ski in Colorado , some ski in Utah, some ski in Europe, some don't ski at all.... So sure there are differences. Different religions, different ethnicities (although some are completely excluded for the most part) . It's all very very nice.
Whatever the differences, an outsider looking in would see a lot of similarities.
Anonymous wrote:>There are legit “townies” with DUIs, eight kids, no college, pick ups, and they become grandparents in their late 30s
Is this issue here that your kids have to know and interact with "regular" Americans? Like that would be so bad?
And also, they write like this is so awful. It's not like one can live in a bubble in NYC and completely avoid the common folk here - just go in a hermetically sealed bubble between the Park Avenue duplex, Dalton, dad's hedge fund office, and your place out east. Once in a while suck it up and bump into the doorman and/or porter.
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}