Can we afford private?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo16956223.html

These guys have done extensive studies and they came to the conclusion that there is no outcome difference.
They go further to imply that bad public schools are much much better than bad private schools.

Here's an interview with the authors:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/are-private-schools-worth-it/280693/

Right, this is the article that led me to believe they didn't study independents.

[Anonymous]

The independents were studied in the higher SES group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement.

Nice. try comparing exmission from top privates vs top publics.

They compared high income kids in public with high income kids in private. If you took all the kids at Whitman, the incomes would be relatively high (maybe a little lower than private). If you took all the kids at NCS and Field, and Visitation, and Burke, and Connelly, the incomes would be high. So that is where you compare. House hold income is the key, not the school. I am sure that if you income matched at DC area private schools with public schools, the outcome would be the same. My point is that there are rich kids who aren't smart enough to get into NCS. If NCS did a cherry picking at Whitman and got a similar group of kids, the outcome would be the same.

I am so sorry that you can't afford private and need to pretend that it is the same as public.

[Anonymous]

Snort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did public for elementary, private for middle and are on the fence about high school. Private for middle has been great-- kids have such particular needs at that age and a good middle school program for us has been priceless. Our child actually loves school-- it's so weird. Who loves 7th grade? I certainly didn't. That said we are agonizing over the expense for high school. We too "can afford it" but we'd be giving up so much buying power in terms of college savings, extra retirement padding, etc. It kind of makes it impossible for us to have wiggle room concerning our jobs. But now that private middle was such a good experience we've gotten a bit hooked on finding something that good for high school.

Mind saying what private you chose for middle? We are considering a similar plan. Totally agree middle school seems like the highest value time to go private.

A small K-8 in MoCo. I would say the name of the school but there's too much info in my post.

[Anonymous]

Here's a good thread on MS and HS private ed and strategizing about what's worth paying for

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/15/92783.page#743595

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement.

Nice. try comparing exmission from top privates vs top publics.

They compared high income kids in public with high income kids in private. If you took all the kids at Whitman, the incomes would be relatively high (maybe a little lower than private). If you took all the kids at NCS and Field, and Visitation, and Burke, and Connelly, the incomes would be high. So that is where you compare. House hold income is the key, not the school. I am sure that if you income matched at DC area private schools with public schools, the outcome would be the same. My point is that there are rich kids who aren't smart enough to get into NCS. If NCS did a cherry picking at Whitman and got a similar group of kids, the outcome would be the same.

I am so sorry that you can't afford private and need to pretend that it is the same as public.

You know, it is this kind of obnoxious, superior, classist BS that makes me not want private. Good God, if the parents are this awful, what are the kids like? You could have just disagreed with PP, but instead acted disgusting and made no substantive point whatsoever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement.

Nice. try comparing exmission from top privates vs top publics.

They compared high income kids in public with high income kids in private. If you took all the kids at Whitman, the incomes would be relatively high (maybe a little lower than private). If you took all the kids at NCS and Field, and Visitation, and Burke, and Connelly, the incomes would be high. So that is where you compare. House hold income is the key, not the school. I am sure that if you income matched at DC area private schools with public schools, the outcome would be the same. My point is that there are rich kids who aren't smart enough to get into NCS. If NCS did a cherry picking at Whitman and got a similar group of kids, the outcome would be the same.

I am so sorry that you can't afford private and need to pretend that it is the same as public.

You know, it is this kind of obnoxious, superior, classist BS that makes me not want private. Good God, if the parents are this awful, what are the kids like? You could have just disagreed with PP, but instead acted disgusting and made no substantive point whatsoever.

You know, she was responding to my post, and I have a child in private school and paying full tuition. I don't care about her silly response and feel sad that anyone could be so troubled (as an adult). Anyway, there are all types in private school. Also, there are some public schools in wealthy areas with parents who are just as immature and snooty as this poster. However, there are some families who truly believe that the public system can not educate their child, they just feel that way. Not all families are like that, but when you pay 30K (pretax 45K) in tuition for one child, you'd better be able to rationalize it. I tried to point out a study to give some perspective. I had actually suspected what the authors concluded since I saw many flaws in the academics at my dd's expensive private school. The only time they ever support private school is for HS when kids live in "blue collar" towns, but they or their families plan to send them to university. But the authors have cautioned that many private schools in these areas are marginally better than the public schools. I have friends who have lucrative businesses and practices in rural areas and they end up puzzled about what to do with their kids in HS.

FWIW, I went to private, parochial, and good public schools, at the end of the day, the public school did the best job, then the private, then the parochial. I have no strong opinions either way.

[Anonymous]

Going back to the original question, this is my suggestion: take a look at the current tuition where you want to go and add 3-5%. Divide by 10 (many schools allow you to pay over 10 - not 12 - months), and put aside that money. See how it goes.

In our case, our HHI is greater than yours and we find private school for two really tough, but we're doing it. The first couple of months for #1 was rough, but once we got in the swing of it, it wasn't so bad. We knew that a fancy car or country club was out of the question, but that wasn't really us anyway. With two, however, the issue isn't a fancy car or a country club, but rather other major unexpeted expenses. For example, a few years ago, our heating totally gave out and we bought a new system. It was a hit, but we managed. Honestly, I don't know how we'd do it if we had more than one major expense like that over a small period of time. So those are things that you need to think about.

[Anonymous]

My advice, as a parent of kids in both public and private, is to do your homework first. Look at area private schools and see which ones have a philosophy that fits with yours or a method of working with children that is a good fit with your own child.

Check out area schools, both your public school and private schools. All public schools are not the same but since attendance is based on geography your choice is limited. So take a good long look at your specific public school. Volunteer at recess (if you can) tour the classrooms. Talk to your neighbors in the school ask for pros/cons and be open-ended (i.e., don't put them on the defensive about public v. private).

Maybe you won't like what you find at area private schools and that may settle the internal debate. Or maybe your idea of private schools is more nuanced after visiting. I visited some of the so-called "top" schools and I didn't find what I was looking for and we passed on them. They work for the families that chose them, just not for us. There were others that were less mentioned but were more what we were looking for and my focus narrowed to only those schools after visiting many private schools in the area.

Tuition is a factor, but if the high cost of "X" school is what worries you, but don't know if it is or isn't a good fit for your family it isn't a valid basis for your financial decision.

I hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

Very important fact in the interview:

"Most of the schools in your study are religious schools. What about private schools that serve purely academic purposes? Are they also underperforming?

STL: Actually, that was not a category in any of the data that we worked with. There’s this category of “other private” that doesn’t fit into Lutheran, Catholic, conservative Christian, et cetera, but that’s really a catch all-category. A very small sample. So we weren’t able to study that."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo16956223.html

These guys have done extensive studies and they came to the conclusion that there is no outcome difference.
They go further to imply that bad public schools are much much better than bad private schools.

Here's an interview with the authors:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/are-private-schools-worth-it/280693/

Right, this is the article that led me to believe they didn't study independents.

New poster. I don't have a link handy right now, but there is a whole academic paper that evaluates and critiques the Lubieski approach. It came out after the Lubieskis started issuing papers in 2004, so I suspect it was from 2005. It basically said they're using flawed analysis, and suggests ways the assessment should be more rigorous. IIRC, it re-runs some of the original Lubieski data with a different analytic tool that's more apples-to-apples, and it concludes that the public schools lag private school results from the same SES. I'll try to find the paper and post a link.

I haven't yet read the recent Lubieski book, so maybe that improves some of their earlier calculations from 2004. IDK.

[Anonymous]

13:01 again. Found it. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=902389 I was wrong on the dates, and also obviously on the spelling of Lubienski. HTH. I recall the paper is interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Going back to the original question, this is my suggestion: take a look at the current tuition where you want to go and add 3-5%. Divide by 10 (many schools allow you to pay over 10 - not 12 - months), and put aside that money. See how it goes.

In our case, our HHI is greater than yours and we find private school for two really tough, but we're doing it. The first couple of months for #1 was rough, but once we got in the swing of it, it wasn't so bad. We knew that a fancy car or country club was out of the question, but that wasn't really us anyway. With two, however, the issue isn't a fancy car or a country club, but rather other major unexpeted expenses. For example, a few years ago, our heating totally gave out and we bought a new system. It was a hit, but we managed. Honestly, I don't know how we'd do it if we had more than one major expense like that over a small period of time. So those are things that you need to think about.

This is, by definition, someone who can't afford private. It is a luxury and if you are this close to the line (unexpected expense could put you over the line), then you can't afford it. I would be in this position too, so I know whereof I speak. Just being able to write the check doesn't mean you can really afford it. Being able to do it with out constant worry and cold-sweat at night about the what-if's: that is what it means to afford it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very important fact in the interview:

"Most of the schools in your study are religious schools. What about private schools that serve purely academic purposes? Are they also underperforming?

STL: Actually, that was not a category in any of the data that we worked with. There’s this category of “other private” that doesn’t fit into Lutheran, Catholic, conservative Christian, et cetera, but that’s really a catch all-category. A very small sample. So we weren’t able to study that."

The lions share of non public schools in the US are religious. All private schools were included, and private like Sidwell was a small fraction. The study looked at outcome by SES. Thus the highest SES was where they would have had the largest chunk of Sidwell like schools. They did say that good privates have better outcome, but that might be the cherry picking phenom. Sidwell would never take all kids at Whitman, but the ones they would take probably would be no better off at Sidwell.
Of note, run, do not walk away from small inexpensive religious schools, including parochial.