advice needed regarding private vs public school

[Anonymous]

hi. I am hoping for some advice from parents who may have struggled with the decision to place their children in private vs public schools.
My son is 5 and will be ready for KG next year. We live in Montogomery County (just moved here) and I am told this is an excellent school
district. He would end up at Whitman High School.
However, he was in private school before we moved here, and when he started here he was way ahead of the class. Now he is with everyone i.e.
he hasn't advanced at all. I do some reading with him.
So I am confused now.
Majority of people in our neighborhood send kids to public schools and are very happy with it. I am not sure what colleges the kids end up at.
I am trying to convince my husband to try private school for him but he has two points.

One we can't afford it
second the outcome will not be different (he wants our son to go to the best colleges nationally)

Beleive it or not we are both physicians. Our combined income will be 450K. We have total of three children and in five years all three would
have to be in private schools then.

Does anyone think we can pull this off financially (post taxes) and still be able to buy a house in Behtesda and pay our mortgage?

How do I find out where kids who graduate from public high school end up in colleges?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

You are in a great district with a profile similar to other families at Whitman. Stay in the public schools and if he tracks higher he will get the enrichment he needs. Your children will do well, especially with such accomplished parents.

[Anonymous]

If you think he's gifted, Montgomery county has a highly gifted program which starts at 1st grade, I heard

[Anonymous]

1. Whitman students do extremely well: http://webreprints.djreprints.com/wsj_tuition_040104.pdf

2. MoCo has a number of gifted & talented programs, magnet schools, etc., which you could investigate.

3. If your son is now performing at the same level as his classmates, is it possible that his new school is simply stronger than his old one?

4. Assuming it takes about $150,000 in pretax income to send three children to private school, I don't see why you could not do so with a $450,000 annual income. It would require that you buy a smaller house, and it is not a choice everyone would make, but it should be feasible.

(Are you Chinese by chance?)

[Anonymous]

MoCo has a gifted and talented program starting in kindergarten, but I think kids could test in at any age.

The MoCo "highly gifted" program is for grades 4-5, with testing in 3rd grade.

If you live in a good school district, your kid is probably in a class with kids from lots of other extremely well educated families (MoCo is notorious for high levels of education, so is Virginia). So the other kids may be more advanced academically than your previous school district.

[Anonymous]

Even at excellent private schools, lots of parents feel that their kids are slowed down/cease to be as "advanced" as they were prior to entering real school. That phenomenon isn't unique to public schools, nor is it a sign that your kid is in the wrong school.

As for college admissions, odds are your kid will have a better chance coming from public schools. Many of the Ivies basically have per school quotas for admissions. It's harder to be in the top six candidates from Sidwell (where a disproportionate number of parents will have Ivy degrees and thus their kids will have a leg up on admissions at those school) than at an excellent public high school. There's probably some breakpoint (e.g. if your kid is in the top third rather than the top 10% of his/her class) where private school kids have an advantage over public school kids (assuming class rank in both contexts would be similar, which strikes me as an iffy assumption), but that's not a calculation you can sensibly make when your kid is 5. And, of course, you can revisit the public vs. private decision later. It's not a permanent commitment.

I send my kid to private school but mainly because I'm an academic (and a teacher of teachers, from both public and private schools) and I want my daughter to be taught in an environment where standardized test scores aren't a major focus. Basically, I wanted her school to embrace the same intellectual values my husband and I do. I'm not too concerned about college admissions or about how she compares to other kids. I'm sure she'll get into a good college (there are lots out there) and her cohort/frame of reference will keep changing. From that standpoint, comparisons among preschoolers are pretty arbitrary.

[Anonymous]

If your primary educational goal is for your children to attend a top college, you probably can't do better than Whitman. Private schools may seem to have stronger college placement records, but those numbers are very much muddied by legacy applicants.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all, this has been a very helpful input for me. It is likely that since this school is focused on social development, next year in KG my DS will be challenged more. I do feel he is smarter and a quick learner, but don't necesarily want him in a higher grade, but just that he should be worked to his potential. I would like teachers to be able to see what potential that particular child has.

Thank you all

[Anonymous]

There are plenty of houses in Bethesda in the $1M range that are reasonably spacious but not at the upper end of things there. Lots below this that are smaller, but with 3 kids I'm assuming you want something bigger. So with $1M, depending on how much equity you are moving from your current house, you are looking at a mortgage of $3-5K.

If you go private, then you might be looking at the 10-month payment plan (unless you can pay $120K up front). Dividing by 10 months (the payment plan is just about that simple), you would be sending $12K to private schools per month, once all three kids are in private.

[Anonymous]

Forgot to add, with that 10-month payment plan, you get two glorious months of no payment, usually March and April. You can use the extra money these months to do house repairs, finance your vacation, or pay for all those summer camps....

[Anonymous]

Here's an overview of the Montgomery County gifted programs:

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/enriched/about/faq.shtm

Here's a link to a discussion group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GTAletters/

Since so much of children's experience is school-specific and even teacher-specific, it can be helpful to be in contact with other parents who might have gone through similar situations and can suggest ways of advocating for your child.

Screening for gifted and talented programs in MoCo happens in 2nd grade, but there are certainly ways of getting accommodations before that. For instance, if your child is reading at a higher level, the school can pull him out into a higher reading group in that grade or, if he meets the requirements, in a higher grade.

Here's a previous thread about public high schools and college acceptance:

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/15/11185.page#64588

[Anonymous]

PP's post was really helpful. I just want to add that there's a gifted & talented program at Takoma Park Elementary School starting in kindergarten. Testing is in the spring or summer before kindergarten, but DC tested in for first grade (we were at the Smithsonian day care for kindergarten and didn't want to leave it).

[Anonymous]

Takoma Park ES's program used to have gifted in the title but no longer does. Now it is the Takoma Park Elementary School Primary Magnet and focuses on science and social studies:

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/specialprograms/elementary/primary_magnet.shtm

[Anonymous]

bump

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:he was in private school before we moved here, and when he started here he was way ahead of the class. Now he is with everyone i.e.
he hasn't advanced at all. I

Do you mean he was ahead of his class in his previous school and is not ahead of his class in his current school? Or that he was ahead of his class at the beginning of this academic year and is so no longer?