What do you get for tuition

[Anonymous]

$50k gets you admission into a club where you sit around and complain that $400k/yr HHI is just not livable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a good question, OP.

It never occurred to us to send our kids to private here in the DMV even though we easily could have afforded it and probably had good enough connections to get the kids into top schools. Parents here will say they don't send their kids to these schools for college admissions -- "we're here for the education!" -- but come college admissions time they're all over this board talking about their edge.

That's why they do it. It's all about (a) keeping their kids away from poor kids and POC and (b) college admissions.

Sidwell’s student body is 57% POC.

I think PP meant the wrong kind of POC

Hahaha sadly avoiding the wrong kind of POC is a goal shared by all parents, not just the Private schools’.

[Anonymous]

For us: kindergarten class in a “top” W district elementary school had 34 kids and one teacher. Multiple kids with significant behavioral challenges without IEP because it was too early. Can’t say much more without identifying school and class but that was enough for us, especially after furniture was thrown in class.
For those of you with 18 kids in class… yay for you. Not everyone gets to go to a charter and is so lucky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a good question, OP.

It never occurred to us to send our kids to private here in the DMV even though we easily could have afforded it and probably had good enough connections to get the kids into top schools. Parents here will say they don't send their kids to these schools for college admissions -- "we're here for the education!" -- but come college admissions time they're all over this board talking about their edge.

That's why they do it. It's all about (a) keeping their kids away from poor kids and POC and (b) college admissions.

I disagree
We left public because personalized learning in an iPad wasn’t working. Teaching to the middle wasn’t working. My kids needed smaller class sizes for extra work on executive functioning, to. Evoke decent writers and one had to relearn how to read words not understood because Lucy Caulkins is a failure

[Anonymous]

I have girls who are good students and well behaved, they were generally ignored in our highly ranked public elementary school. Teachers would give us very little feedback other than they were doing well and didn’t need any attention and we felt they were getting lost and floating through. We moved them to a highly ranked all girls school and they are flourishing, teachers are spending a lot more time getting to know them as individuals and tailoring their learning. It is a ton of money for us and certainly a luxury as they were fine in public school, but for our girls we see a huge value to this type of education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For us: kindergarten class in a “top” W district elementary school had 34 kids and one teacher. Multiple kids with significant behavioral challenges without IEP because it was too early. Can’t say much more without identifying school and class but that was enough for us, especially after furniture was thrown in class.
For those of you with 18 kids in class… yay for you. Not everyone gets to go to a charter and is so lucky.

MCPS tax dollars go to fund reduced class sizes at “focus schools”. These are typically schools that have a little bit of poverty and also a lot of affluent people, which is a good number of schools in Takoma Park and Silver Spring. Those affluent people don’t think your child deserves to have access to adequate and appropriate education because they say that you are affluent. It’s really crazy, honestly.

Similar to you, overcrowding, concerning behavior incidents and the lack of enrichment in our “W” cluster was one of the reasons that we bailed to private.

But it will continue to bother me how the county has set up a system of deliberate neglect and favoritism. The hypocrisy makes my head spin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have girls who are good students and well behaved, they were generally ignored in our highly ranked public elementary school. Teachers would give us very little feedback other than they were doing well and didn’t need any attention and we felt they were getting lost and floating through. We moved them to a highly ranked all girls school and they are flourishing, teachers are spending a lot more time getting to know them as individuals and tailoring their learning. It is a ton of money for us and certainly a luxury as they were fine in public school, but for our girls we see a huge value to this type of education.

We had the exact same experience. Instead of getting feedback from teachers, they would say things like “you have nothing to worry about”. Like hoe does that help? I understand from their perspective that we’ll behaved and above grade level kids make it easier for them to deal with the other kids. But I always kept asking the question, what about my kid? Don’t they also deserve an education? So we had to start supplementing after school with tutoring, but quickly realized how unfair it is to the kids.

It’s just such a waste of time to Spend a whole day in school and then have more school after. Particularly when there is some many more enriching things that can be done with that time. So that’s when private made a lot of sense for us. In the end, all we have is our time on this earth and we shouldn’t waste it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell's bumper sticker alone is worth 50k.

For that kind of money, I want a magnet

for that it will cost you 55k

[Anonymous]

We started in MCPS, and have been in private for the last couple years. From our perspective, you get:
1. Much smaller class sizes. MCPS elementary classes were generally about 25. Our private is about 12.
2. No disruptive students. Our kids' MCPS classes always had a couple disruptive kids that the teacher had to tolerate. Not so in private.
3. Better organized, more customer/parent focused, less bureaucracy. We've been gone since COVID, but our impression is that MCPS has become even more disorganized than it was when we were there as a result of the COVID disruptions.
4. Less standardized testing. Our kids had so many standardized tests at MCPS that it was distracting from actual learning. I'm not against testing, but MCPS has gone overboard.
5. Much nicer facilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lurker here due to our impending move to the DC area, where we plan to enroll our children in private middle and high school. We are coming from a smaller city, and our children have always attending strong independent schools with tuition being about $15-20K/year. I just read the previous post about Sidwell's tuition and would like to hear from parents what they are expecting from a school where tuition is $50K/year? How is that different from some of the less prestigious independents that are more like $30K/year?

What less prestigious independents in DC area charge $30k/year? I don't know of any, except religious schools.

[Anonymous]

OP we were in a similar situation to you. Now that we’ve been here a while, beyond just the difference in the cost of living, I think the teachers’ salaries are higher here as they have more advanced degrees. Not uncommon to have elementary school teachers with masters from top schools, etc. I think customized bussing programs, full-blown cafeterias, larger learning centers, greater security and larger admissions departments/expenses (more transient area means more turn-over) also add to the cost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a good question, OP.

It never occurred to us to send our kids to private here in the DMV even though we easily could have afforded it and probably had good enough connections to get the kids into top schools. Parents here will say they don't send their kids to these schools for college admissions -- "we're here for the education!" -- but come college admissions time they're all over this board talking about their edge.

That's why they do it. It's all about (a) keeping their kids away from poor kids and POC and (b) college admissions.

Sidwell’s student body is 57% POC.

Umm, no. It’s majority white. I think you mean 40% POC. Most of those are biracial/mixed race followed by African American. Very small contingents of Asians and Hispanics.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have girls who are good students and well behaved, they were generally ignored in our highly ranked public elementary school. Teachers would give us very little feedback other than they were doing well and didn’t need any attention and we felt they were getting lost and floating through. We moved them to a highly ranked all girls school and they are flourishing, teachers are spending a lot more time getting to know them as individuals and tailoring their learning. It is a ton of money for us and certainly a luxury as they were fine in public school, but for our girls we see a huge value to this type of education.

We had the exact same experience. Instead of getting feedback from teachers, they would say things like “you have nothing to worry about”. Like hoe does that help? I understand from their perspective that we’ll behaved and above grade level kids make it easier for them to deal with the other kids. But I always kept asking the question, what about my kid? Don’t they also deserve an education? So we had to start supplementing after school with tutoring, but quickly realized how unfair it is to the kids.

It’s just such a waste of time to Spend a whole day in school and then have more school after. Particularly when there is some many more enriching things that can be done with that time. So that’s when private made a lot of sense for us. In the end, all we have is our time on this earth and we shouldn’t waste it.

This. Our older DC was FINE in MCPS, but we knew she was being left alone bc she wasn’t the problem. Younger DC was too young to do an entire year on zoom - we figured that out too late - and needed some actual instruction.
Our non-Top-3 school tuition has netted us two kids who are happy to go to school, engaged in what they are learning, and SEEN by the school. We asked for a conference re DC1’s options in a particular area and three teachers attended, two of whom are not her actual teacher, and it was clear they actually KNEW her. And they had already been thinking about how to address her needs. Holy cow.
Private school tuition is a stretch for us, but we will continue to eat beans and send our kids to private as long as possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

We are at a $50k school, and what my child gets is in person school, small class size (8-15 v 30+ in public), and teachers who care about tham and actually know and ask about their extra curricular activities. Uniforms, activity fees, annual gala, etc all cost extra. Don't care - it is worth it

That's alot to pay for that. You could train Alexa to ask them about this.

NP…it is clear your child has never attended public school. Our DC attended a charter that had 15-18 kids per class. The teachers from that school still call to check in, have even visited our home, and tutored the kid during distance learning. Now in DCPS, the social studies teacher came to DC’s soccer game on a Sunday morning. Your view of public school is really dated. Sorry you are paying 50k for what our kid gets for free.

Your kid was locked out of in-person learning for 1.5 years. Please sit down.

Hahaha

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a good question, OP.

It never occurred to us to send our kids to private here in the DMV even though we easily could have afforded it and probably had good enough connections to get the kids into top schools. Parents here will say they don't send their kids to these schools for college admissions -- "we're here for the education!" -- but come college admissions time they're all over this board talking about their edge.

That's why they do it. It's all about (a) keeping their kids away from poor kids and POC and (b) college admissions.

Sidwell’s student body is 57% POC.

I think PP meant the wrong kind of POC

Hahaha sadly avoiding the wrong kind of POC is a goal shared by all parents, not just the Private schools’.

The goal is to avoid all low-income people - not just POC. New flash: there are poor white people.