If you are wealthy would you send your kids to a W school over private?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:IF both W schools and privates were free, what would you choose?

I am a new poster and have not been able to read all 46 pages of this thread but I did skim through a it and approached our choice much like you posed this question. We are in a W cluster but had considered private. Particularly Bullis. We decided to stick with our W cluster for many reasons but mostly because the diversity that you speak of at Bullis turned us off. We went to a football game and all the kids they bussed in were playing and the remaining student section was not diverse at all. I also truly believe that the math curriculm in our W cluster is leaps and bounds ahead of Bullis. Other factors lead to our decision as well but in the end even if it was free we decided to pass on private. In my opinion Private is worth it if you go for name recognition which is therefore only worth it when looking for single sex schools and that was not appealing for us.

Students who play sports are also students who are in the classroom. The Bulls football program is one of the best high school football program in the US. It has phenomenal athletes that earn the attention of D1 schools for college scholarship opportunities. Same for other athletic programs at the school.

A better measurement of the academic atmosphere is a tour of the school during the school day. Unlike public schools, athletes wear the same uniform as all other students. There’s nothing on them that represents themselves as a football player.

For math, child left Churchill for Bullis specifically for their STEM program. There were more advanced classes at Bullis for math and electives not offered at Churchill. The peer group for advanced math was around 12 students to Churchill’s 2 (hence why my son, if he stayed at Churchill, wouldn’t have a math class past 11th grade). The top math, science, and AP economics classes were taught by university professors. The quality of instruction and availability for help during office hours was also a huge benefit at Bullis.

Finally, help with the college search process was another benefit of private. Counselors at Bullis have a small fraction of students compared to their MCPS counterparts. Bullis counselors actually have several meetings with students to help them come up with a list of colleges, read essays, and provide feedback. They also help students chunk out the deadlines. At Churchill there was zero help with navigating the college process.

dp.. I call BS. It's a simple numbers game. Public schools like the Ws have way more students than Bullis, and many are also UMC. There are way more high achieving students in public schools than there are at Bullis simply because there are more public school students than private schools.

if your DS was that advanced in math he could've gone to Blair STEM, but it seems to me that he is probably not intuitively advanced as much as he is coached to be advanced. And yes, a lot of public school students are also tutored and coached to be advanced in math, as well, but they don't send their kids to private because they think private is much more advanced in STEM than Blair, for example.

BS meter is showing all the way to the right.

PP - this thread is asking if money wasn’t a factor, would you send your child to a W school or private. Blair is not a W school nor do most people in Potomac wish to put their child on a 45 minute bus ride to Silver Spring for access to a challenging math class and a segregated school within a school.

You may not agree with our choice, however, Bullis was a wonderful experience for my son. Bullis met his needs and provided a more challenging curriculum than Churchill. Bullis was also only 10 minutes from our house.

How did Bullis provide a more challenging math curriculum than your W school?

I’m not the person you’re responding to, but we’ve posted course catalogs for private schools repeatedly and compared them to W schools. The course offerings at private schools on the high school level are just as advanced if not more than the W schools.

Course offerings in catalogs are marketing brochures. It doesn't mean that the courses are taught every year. It will depend on if there are enough students who want or have the ability to take those classes. Works the same way in public schools and colleges. There are course offerings in catalogues that aren't always offered every year at that particular school.

That’s your excuse? Ok, so post proof that private schools don’t actually offer the advanced courses as much as public schools do. Otherwise it’s just obvious you’re grasping at straws to crap on private schools.

? not an excuse. Just stating the way it is. Colleges do the same.

But to use it as a way to argue private schools are weaker in math, you’d have to prove that the advanced courses are offered less often than at public schools.

ok, then maybe the Bullis parent could tell which advanced math course their kid took at Bullis that a W school didn't have, and also how many kids were in that advanced math class?

The kids in the advanced math classes in public are getting outside enrichment for math. It’s not from the teachings of public.

Nonsense. My kid at a W took multivariable calculus and I can assure that neither he nor his peers used tutors or outside help. We moved our kids from private to public for lots of reasons, and more advanced math and science classes was very much one of those reasons. The schools may be larger, but within each of those W schools there is a very significant cohort of smart, disciplined, and motivated students who do not need the coddling that so many private school kids do. No regrets.

Not sure which private school you came from or what anonymous W school your children attended. However, not all W high schools offer math beyond Calculus BC. We were in this situation and either my child had to transfer to a public school other than our neighborhood W school or not have an opportunity to participate in after school athletics so he could travel to Montgomery College for math. Transportation to the other school or to Montgomery College had to be supplied by our family. MCPS said that because there were not enough students in our school to take multi variable so it wasn’t being offered.

How recently?

Wootton, Whitman, and WJ all advertise it in their catalog currently.

And virtual academy is being deployed more since COVID, avoiding commute.

The school was Wootton and it was Pre-COVID. The catalog doesn’t guarantee that the class will be available for your child. They need a minimum number of students and a qualified teacher for the class to exist. It’s easier for MCPS to require students to go to other locations or simply say anything above Calculus BC is an elective. They also suggested that my child not take math his Junior and Senior year of high school.

This is where a private school would have been an advantage. A private school would not require a minimum number of students. If needed, the student would have a one on one session with a teacher. That's what you get for paying the big bucks (in addition to the other benefits).

In fact, when my daughter was in a small parochial in middle school for $10K a year tuition, there was only one student in her class who was taking Algebra 2 as an 8th grader. She had a one on one class daily with a math specialist. Ironically, she ended up going to an MCPS magnet for HS. Probably displaced some mcps middle school student for the spot.

Please stop lying. Few private schools would provide a 1-1 class for a student and usually only if it occurs once the student has already been enrolled for some time and for a required class. For instance a kid in a K-8 who advances quicker than their peers. It is a rarity that this occurs in private. And privates like it this way. So much so that if you ask about advance programming, special education, or anything out of the norm they will politely acknowledge that depending on the circumstances it may not best the school. If you’re going to talk about private school at least provide the facts.

Oh and MCPS like all schools in Maryland requires 4yrs of Math in HS. So if a kid had maxed out the math available in their HS they would be required to provide them access to math in another location even a college if necessary.

[Anonymous]

This is such a fruitless discussion. The response depends on your kid and your finances. I will say if you haven’t experienced private school, you really can’t comment on it. It’s like pressing your nose up against the window at a fancy restaurant and trying to tell everyone what the food tastes like.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IF both W schools and privates were free, what would you choose?

I am a new poster and have not been able to read all 46 pages of this thread but I did skim through a it and approached our choice much like you posed this question. We are in a W cluster but had considered private. Particularly Bullis. We decided to stick with our W cluster for many reasons but mostly because the diversity that you speak of at Bullis turned us off. We went to a football game and all the kids they bussed in were playing and the remaining student section was not diverse at all. I also truly believe that the math curriculm in our W cluster is leaps and bounds ahead of Bullis. Other factors lead to our decision as well but in the end even if it was free we decided to pass on private. In my opinion Private is worth it if you go for name recognition which is therefore only worth it when looking for single sex schools and that was not appealing for us.

Students who play sports are also students who are in the classroom. The Bulls football program is one of the best high school football program in the US. It has phenomenal athletes that earn the attention of D1 schools for college scholarship opportunities. Same for other athletic programs at the school.

A better measurement of the academic atmosphere is a tour of the school during the school day. Unlike public schools, athletes wear the same uniform as all other students. There’s nothing on them that represents themselves as a football player.

For math, child left Churchill for Bullis specifically for their STEM program. There were more advanced classes at Bullis for math and electives not offered at Churchill. The peer group for advanced math was around 12 students to Churchill’s 2 (hence why my son, if he stayed at Churchill, wouldn’t have a math class past 11th grade). The top math, science, and AP economics classes were taught by university professors. The quality of instruction and availability for help during office hours was also a huge benefit at Bullis.

Finally, help with the college search process was another benefit of private. Counselors at Bullis have a small fraction of students compared to their MCPS counterparts. Bullis counselors actually have several meetings with students to help them come up with a list of colleges, read essays, and provide feedback. They also help students chunk out the deadlines. At Churchill there was zero help with navigating the college process.

dp.. I call BS. It's a simple numbers game. Public schools like the Ws have way more students than Bullis, and many are also UMC. There are way more high achieving students in public schools than there are at Bullis simply because there are more public school students than private schools.

if your DS was that advanced in math he could've gone to Blair STEM, but it seems to me that he is probably not intuitively advanced as much as he is coached to be advanced. And yes, a lot of public school students are also tutored and coached to be advanced in math, as well, but they don't send their kids to private because they think private is much more advanced in STEM than Blair, for example.

BS meter is showing all the way to the right.

PP - this thread is asking if money wasn’t a factor, would you send your child to a W school or private. Blair is not a W school nor do most people in Potomac wish to put their child on a 45 minute bus ride to Silver Spring for access to a challenging math class and a segregated school within a school.

You may not agree with our choice, however, Bullis was a wonderful experience for my son. Bullis met his needs and provided a more challenging curriculum than Churchill. Bullis was also only 10 minutes from our house.

How did Bullis provide a more challenging math curriculum than your W school?

I’m not the person you’re responding to, but we’ve posted course catalogs for private schools repeatedly and compared them to W schools. The course offerings at private schools on the high school level are just as advanced if not more than the W schools.

Course offerings in catalogs are marketing brochures. It doesn't mean that the courses are taught every year. It will depend on if there are enough students who want or have the ability to take those classes. Works the same way in public schools and colleges. There are course offerings in catalogues that aren't always offered every year at that particular school.

That’s your excuse? Ok, so post proof that private schools don’t actually offer the advanced courses as much as public schools do. Otherwise it’s just obvious you’re grasping at straws to crap on private schools.

? not an excuse. Just stating the way it is. Colleges do the same.

But to use it as a way to argue private schools are weaker in math, you’d have to prove that the advanced courses are offered less often than at public schools.

ok, then maybe the Bullis parent could tell which advanced math course their kid took at Bullis that a W school didn't have, and also how many kids were in that advanced math class?

The kids in the advanced math classes in public are getting outside enrichment for math. It’s not from the teachings of public.

Nonsense. My kid at a W took multivariable calculus and I can assure that neither he nor his peers used tutors or outside help. We moved our kids from private to public for lots of reasons, and more advanced math and science classes was very much one of those reasons. The schools may be larger, but within each of those W schools there is a very significant cohort of smart, disciplined, and motivated students who do not need the coddling that so many private school kids do. No regrets.

Not sure which private school you came from or what anonymous W school your children attended. However, not all W high schools offer math beyond Calculus BC. We were in this situation and either my child had to transfer to a public school other than our neighborhood W school or not have an opportunity to participate in after school athletics so he could travel to Montgomery College for math. Transportation to the other school or to Montgomery College had to be supplied by our family. MCPS said that because there were not enough students in our school to take multi variable so it wasn’t being offered.

How recently?

Wootton, Whitman, and WJ all advertise it in their catalog currently.

And virtual academy is being deployed more since COVID, avoiding commute.

The school was Wootton and it was Pre-COVID. The catalog doesn’t guarantee that the class will be available for your child. They need a minimum number of students and a qualified teacher for the class to exist. It’s easier for MCPS to require students to go to other locations or simply say anything above Calculus BC is an elective. They also suggested that my child not take math his Junior and Senior year of high school.

This is where a private school would have been an advantage. A private school would not require a minimum number of students. If needed, the student would have a one on one session with a teacher. That's what you get for paying the big bucks (in addition to the other benefits).

In fact, when my daughter was in a small parochial in middle school for $10K a year tuition, there was only one student in her class who was taking Algebra 2 as an 8th grader. She had a one on one class daily with a math specialist. Ironically, she ended up going to an MCPS magnet for HS. Probably displaced some mcps middle school student for the spot.

Please stop lying. Few private schools would provide a 1-1 class for a student and usually only if it occurs once the student has already been enrolled for some time and for a required class. For instance a kid in a K-8 who advances quicker than their peers. It is a rarity that this occurs in private. And privates like it this way. So much so that if you ask about advance programming, special education, or anything out of the norm they will politely acknowledge that depending on the circumstances it may not best the school. If you’re going to talk about private school at least provide the facts.

Oh and MCPS like all schools in Maryland requires 4yrs of Math in HS. So if a kid had maxed out the math available in their HS they would be required to provide them access to math in another location even a college if necessary.

You’re spewing such crap about differentiation in private schools. My kid was given more challenging math in kindergarten in a K-8. We didn’t ask for it. They just gave her extra work.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IF both W schools and privates were free, what would you choose?

I am a new poster and have not been able to read all 46 pages of this thread but I did skim through a it and approached our choice much like you posed this question. We are in a W cluster but had considered private. Particularly Bullis. We decided to stick with our W cluster for many reasons but mostly because the diversity that you speak of at Bullis turned us off. We went to a football game and all the kids they bussed in were playing and the remaining student section was not diverse at all. I also truly believe that the math curriculm in our W cluster is leaps and bounds ahead of Bullis. Other factors lead to our decision as well but in the end even if it was free we decided to pass on private. In my opinion Private is worth it if you go for name recognition which is therefore only worth it when looking for single sex schools and that was not appealing for us.

Students who play sports are also students who are in the classroom. The Bulls football program is one of the best high school football program in the US. It has phenomenal athletes that earn the attention of D1 schools for college scholarship opportunities. Same for other athletic programs at the school.

A better measurement of the academic atmosphere is a tour of the school during the school day. Unlike public schools, athletes wear the same uniform as all other students. There’s nothing on them that represents themselves as a football player.

For math, child left Churchill for Bullis specifically for their STEM program. There were more advanced classes at Bullis for math and electives not offered at Churchill. The peer group for advanced math was around 12 students to Churchill’s 2 (hence why my son, if he stayed at Churchill, wouldn’t have a math class past 11th grade). The top math, science, and AP economics classes were taught by university professors. The quality of instruction and availability for help during office hours was also a huge benefit at Bullis.

Finally, help with the college search process was another benefit of private. Counselors at Bullis have a small fraction of students compared to their MCPS counterparts. Bullis counselors actually have several meetings with students to help them come up with a list of colleges, read essays, and provide feedback. They also help students chunk out the deadlines. At Churchill there was zero help with navigating the college process.

dp.. I call BS. It's a simple numbers game. Public schools like the Ws have way more students than Bullis, and many are also UMC. There are way more high achieving students in public schools than there are at Bullis simply because there are more public school students than private schools.

if your DS was that advanced in math he could've gone to Blair STEM, but it seems to me that he is probably not intuitively advanced as much as he is coached to be advanced. And yes, a lot of public school students are also tutored and coached to be advanced in math, as well, but they don't send their kids to private because they think private is much more advanced in STEM than Blair, for example.

BS meter is showing all the way to the right.

PP - this thread is asking if money wasn’t a factor, would you send your child to a W school or private. Blair is not a W school nor do most people in Potomac wish to put their child on a 45 minute bus ride to Silver Spring for access to a challenging math class and a segregated school within a school.

You may not agree with our choice, however, Bullis was a wonderful experience for my son. Bullis met his needs and provided a more challenging curriculum than Churchill. Bullis was also only 10 minutes from our house.

How did Bullis provide a more challenging math curriculum than your W school?

I’m not the person you’re responding to, but we’ve posted course catalogs for private schools repeatedly and compared them to W schools. The course offerings at private schools on the high school level are just as advanced if not more than the W schools.

Course offerings in catalogs are marketing brochures. It doesn't mean that the courses are taught every year. It will depend on if there are enough students who want or have the ability to take those classes. Works the same way in public schools and colleges. There are course offerings in catalogues that aren't always offered every year at that particular school.

That’s your excuse? Ok, so post proof that private schools don’t actually offer the advanced courses as much as public schools do. Otherwise it’s just obvious you’re grasping at straws to crap on private schools.

? not an excuse. Just stating the way it is. Colleges do the same.

But to use it as a way to argue private schools are weaker in math, you’d have to prove that the advanced courses are offered less often than at public schools.

ok, then maybe the Bullis parent could tell which advanced math course their kid took at Bullis that a W school didn't have, and also how many kids were in that advanced math class?

The kids in the advanced math classes in public are getting outside enrichment for math. It’s not from the teachings of public.

Nonsense. My kid at a W took multivariable calculus and I can assure that neither he nor his peers used tutors or outside help. We moved our kids from private to public for lots of reasons, and more advanced math and science classes was very much one of those reasons. The schools may be larger, but within each of those W schools there is a very significant cohort of smart, disciplined, and motivated students who do not need the coddling that so many private school kids do. No regrets.

Not sure which private school you came from or what anonymous W school your children attended. However, not all W high schools offer math beyond Calculus BC. We were in this situation and either my child had to transfer to a public school other than our neighborhood W school or not have an opportunity to participate in after school athletics so he could travel to Montgomery College for math. Transportation to the other school or to Montgomery College had to be supplied by our family. MCPS said that because there were not enough students in our school to take multi variable so it wasn’t being offered.

How recently?

Wootton, Whitman, and WJ all advertise it in their catalog currently.

And virtual academy is being deployed more since COVID, avoiding commute.

The school was Wootton and it was Pre-COVID. The catalog doesn’t guarantee that the class will be available for your child. They need a minimum number of students and a qualified teacher for the class to exist. It’s easier for MCPS to require students to go to other locations or simply say anything above Calculus BC is an elective. They also suggested that my child not take math his Junior and Senior year of high school.

This is where a private school would have been an advantage. A private school would not require a minimum number of students. If needed, the student would have a one on one session with a teacher. That's what you get for paying the big bucks (in addition to the other benefits).

In fact, when my daughter was in a small parochial in middle school for $10K a year tuition, there was only one student in her class who was taking Algebra 2 as an 8th grader. She had a one on one class daily with a math specialist. Ironically, she ended up going to an MCPS magnet for HS. Probably displaced some mcps middle school student for the spot.

Please stop lying. Few private schools would provide a 1-1 class for a student and usually only if it occurs once the student has already been enrolled for some time and for a required class. For instance a kid in a K-8 who advances quicker than their peers. It is a rarity that this occurs in private. And privates like it this way. So much so that if you ask about advance programming, special education, or anything out of the norm they will politely acknowledge that depending on the circumstances it may not best the school. If you’re going to talk about private school at least provide the facts.

Oh and MCPS like all schools in Maryland requires 4yrs of Math in HS. So if a kid had maxed out the math available in their HS they would be required to provide them access to math in another location even a college if necessary.

You’re spewing such crap about differentiation in private schools. My kid was given more challenging math in kindergarten in a K-8. We didn’t ask for it. They just gave her extra work.

LOL publics do the same. They gave my DC extra work because DC was so advanced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our W neighborhood probably about 1/3 of the kids go to private. A large percentage were struggling in public for one reason or another. Many are quirky and could not deal socially with the big competitive environment of public schools and others were having trouble being motivated academically. I can think of only a handful of popular well adjusted kids who are A students who decided to go to private even for 9th.

Where I live in Bethesda 20817, everyone--or nearly everyone--with money is doing private. Liberal or Conservative. They have the resources and want out of MCPS.

yet, Whitman has 2000+ students. Must be all those poor people in Whitman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our W neighborhood probably about 1/3 of the kids go to private. A large percentage were struggling in public for one reason or another. Many are quirky and could not deal socially with the big competitive environment of public schools and others were having trouble being motivated academically. I can think of only a handful of popular well adjusted kids who are A students who decided to go to private even for 9th.

Where I live in Bethesda 20817, everyone--or nearly everyone--with money is doing private. Liberal or Conservative. They have the resources and want out of MCPS.

I grew up in Bethesda, specifically the Whitman catchment, and graduated from there in 2009. Back then, most people I knew who lived in gigantic $2M+ homes were going to private schools instead of Whitman, though there were still a handful of kids in those homes who attended Whitman. Most kids actually attending Whitman back then lived in $600k-$1.5M homes. Fast forward to today, and homes zoned for Whitman and Churchill that are less than $1M are nearly non-existent, and even tear-downs are going for $900k. Homes that sold for just $1.3M as recently as 2019 could sell for $2.2M today. I find it extremely difficult to imagine that people living in an area that is as prohibitively expensive as Bethesda are abandoning MCPS for privates when the school enrollment trends in Bethesda show otherwise. In fact, I worry that Whitman and other schools in Bethesda/Potomac areas (and even RM at this point) are increasingly becoming "private public schools." Whitman was really affluent when I attended in the 2000s, but we still had an actual cohort of real middle-class students. Not DCUM "middle-class," but actual middle-class. I'm talking about dual fed families, households where one parent was a teacher for MCPS, and even a handful of students with a parent or parents who worked in high-paying blue-collar jobs. You won't find any families like that in Whitman anymore. In the next decade, there will be almost no kids at Whitman whose parents didn't buy their house (at least partially) with family money unless MoCo strives to bring more desperately needed affordable housing in the Whitman catchment.

I can just tell you that most people at my country club do private school, and most of the people I know in the 2+ million homes in 20817 do private school.

Some are family money. Many are entrepreneurs and other high earning professionals.

I think this pretty much sums it up. I've lived in Bethesda and Chevy Chase for a number of years now. Much of this school discussion can be reduced to basic human nature. For the very wealthy and privileged - the country club demographic - they will never send their children to a W school. Projecting status and exclusivity is very important to them. Nothing anyone says is going to convince them that sending a kid to Whitman is more valuable than sending a kid to Landon or Holton Arms. Because in their world it isn't. There's no status there.

For professionals with smart well-adjusted kids in the W clusters - families earning say 500, 600 thousand a year - nothing is going to convince them that spending $100,000 a year on two kids to attend private is worth it, particularly when you can get a very high level, very rigorous education at a W school. Those kids loading up on AP classes work their asses off. But they also have the benefit of being in a large school where there are all types of kids and everybody can find a place. Plus the wide variety of extracurriculars available at these schools. It's a no-brainer for these families.

So what you see - at least in the neighborhoods I'm familiar with - is that the private school kids tend to be very wealthy or they are special needs. Families decide that publics aren't going to work for their particular child. Could be behavioral issues, ADHD, lots of things. But to succeed in public schools does require a certain amount of self-motivation and an ability to read social situations.And everyone wants the best environment for their child. For many special needs kids who need more attention, privates probably are better.

Nothing anyone says here is going to change anyone's opinion. People live in their realities.

To the poster who said you can't take multivariable calculus in a public school here, yes you can. Whitman certainly offers it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IF both W schools and privates were free, what would you choose?

I am a new poster and have not been able to read all 46 pages of this thread but I did skim through a it and approached our choice much like you posed this question. We are in a W cluster but had considered private. Particularly Bullis. We decided to stick with our W cluster for many reasons but mostly because the diversity that you speak of at Bullis turned us off. We went to a football game and all the kids they bussed in were playing and the remaining student section was not diverse at all. I also truly believe that the math curriculm in our W cluster is leaps and bounds ahead of Bullis. Other factors lead to our decision as well but in the end even if it was free we decided to pass on private. In my opinion Private is worth it if you go for name recognition which is therefore only worth it when looking for single sex schools and that was not appealing for us.

Students who play sports are also students who are in the classroom. The Bulls football program is one of the best high school football program in the US. It has phenomenal athletes that earn the attention of D1 schools for college scholarship opportunities. Same for other athletic programs at the school.

A better measurement of the academic atmosphere is a tour of the school during the school day. Unlike public schools, athletes wear the same uniform as all other students. There’s nothing on them that represents themselves as a football player.

For math, child left Churchill for Bullis specifically for their STEM program. There were more advanced classes at Bullis for math and electives not offered at Churchill. The peer group for advanced math was around 12 students to Churchill’s 2 (hence why my son, if he stayed at Churchill, wouldn’t have a math class past 11th grade). The top math, science, and AP economics classes were taught by university professors. The quality of instruction and availability for help during office hours was also a huge benefit at Bullis.

Finally, help with the college search process was another benefit of private. Counselors at Bullis have a small fraction of students compared to their MCPS counterparts. Bullis counselors actually have several meetings with students to help them come up with a list of colleges, read essays, and provide feedback. They also help students chunk out the deadlines. At Churchill there was zero help with navigating the college process.

dp.. I call BS. It's a simple numbers game. Public schools like the Ws have way more students than Bullis, and many are also UMC. There are way more high achieving students in public schools than there are at Bullis simply because there are more public school students than private schools.

if your DS was that advanced in math he could've gone to Blair STEM, but it seems to me that he is probably not intuitively advanced as much as he is coached to be advanced. And yes, a lot of public school students are also tutored and coached to be advanced in math, as well, but they don't send their kids to private because they think private is much more advanced in STEM than Blair, for example.

BS meter is showing all the way to the right.

PP - this thread is asking if money wasn’t a factor, would you send your child to a W school or private. Blair is not a W school nor do most people in Potomac wish to put their child on a 45 minute bus ride to Silver Spring for access to a challenging math class and a segregated school within a school.

You may not agree with our choice, however, Bullis was a wonderful experience for my son. Bullis met his needs and provided a more challenging curriculum than Churchill. Bullis was also only 10 minutes from our house.

How did Bullis provide a more challenging math curriculum than your W school?

I’m not the person you’re responding to, but we’ve posted course catalogs for private schools repeatedly and compared them to W schools. The course offerings at private schools on the high school level are just as advanced if not more than the W schools.

Course offerings in catalogs are marketing brochures. It doesn't mean that the courses are taught every year. It will depend on if there are enough students who want or have the ability to take those classes. Works the same way in public schools and colleges. There are course offerings in catalogues that aren't always offered every year at that particular school.

That’s your excuse? Ok, so post proof that private schools don’t actually offer the advanced courses as much as public schools do. Otherwise it’s just obvious you’re grasping at straws to crap on private schools.

? not an excuse. Just stating the way it is. Colleges do the same.

But to use it as a way to argue private schools are weaker in math, you’d have to prove that the advanced courses are offered less often than at public schools.

ok, then maybe the Bullis parent could tell which advanced math course their kid took at Bullis that a W school didn't have, and also how many kids were in that advanced math class?

The kids in the advanced math classes in public are getting outside enrichment for math. It’s not from the teachings of public.

Nonsense. My kid at a W took multivariable calculus and I can assure that neither he nor his peers used tutors or outside help. We moved our kids from private to public for lots of reasons, and more advanced math and science classes was very much one of those reasons. The schools may be larger, but within each of those W schools there is a very significant cohort of smart, disciplined, and motivated students who do not need the coddling that so many private school kids do. No regrets.

Not sure which private school you came from or what anonymous W school your children attended. However, not all W high schools offer math beyond Calculus BC. We were in this situation and either my child had to transfer to a public school other than our neighborhood W school or not have an opportunity to participate in after school athletics so he could travel to Montgomery College for math. Transportation to the other school or to Montgomery College had to be supplied by our family. MCPS said that because there were not enough students in our school to take multi variable so it wasn’t being offered.

How recently?

Wootton, Whitman, and WJ all advertise it in their catalog currently.

And virtual academy is being deployed more since COVID, avoiding commute.

The school was Wootton and it was Pre-COVID. The catalog doesn’t guarantee that the class will be available for your child. They need a minimum number of students and a qualified teacher for the class to exist. It’s easier for MCPS to require students to go to other locations or simply say anything above Calculus BC is an elective. They also suggested that my child not take math his Junior and Senior year of high school.

This is where a private school would have been an advantage. A private school would not require a minimum number of students. If needed, the student would have a one on one session with a teacher. That's what you get for paying the big bucks (in addition to the other benefits).

In fact, when my daughter was in a small parochial in middle school for $10K a year tuition, there was only one student in her class who was taking Algebra 2 as an 8th grader. She had a one on one class daily with a math specialist. Ironically, she ended up going to an MCPS magnet for HS. Probably displaced some mcps middle school student for the spot.

Please stop lying. Few private schools would provide a 1-1 class for a student and usually only if it occurs once the student has already been enrolled for some time and for a required class. For instance a kid in a K-8 who advances quicker than their peers. It is a rarity that this occurs in private. And privates like it this way. So much so that if you ask about advance programming, special education, or anything out of the norm they will politely acknowledge that depending on the circumstances it may not best the school. If you’re going to talk about private school at least provide the facts.

Oh and MCPS like all schools in Maryland requires 4yrs of Math in HS. So if a kid had maxed out the math available in their HS they would be required to provide them access to math in another location even a college if necessary.

You’re spewing such crap about differentiation in private schools. My kid was given more challenging math in kindergarten in a K-8. We didn’t ask for it. They just gave her extra work.

LOL publics do the same. They gave my DC extra work because DC was so advanced.

Not just more worksheets.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:In our W neighborhood probably about 1/3 of the kids go to private. A large percentage were struggling in public for one reason or another. Many are quirky and could not deal socially with the big competitive environment of public schools and others were having trouble being motivated academically. I can think of only a handful of popular well adjusted kids who are A students who decided to go to private even for 9th.

Where I live in Bethesda 20817, everyone--or nearly everyone--with money is doing private. Liberal or Conservative. They have the resources and want out of MCPS.

I grew up in Bethesda, specifically the Whitman catchment, and graduated from there in 2009. Back then, most people I knew who lived in gigantic $2M+ homes were going to private schools instead of Whitman, though there were still a handful of kids in those homes who attended Whitman. Most kids actually attending Whitman back then lived in $600k-$1.5M homes. Fast forward to today, and homes zoned for Whitman and Churchill that are less than $1M are nearly non-existent, and even tear-downs are going for $900k. Homes that sold for just $1.3M as recently as 2019 could sell for $2.2M today. I find it extremely difficult to imagine that people living in an area that is as prohibitively expensive as Bethesda are abandoning MCPS for privates when the school enrollment trends in Bethesda show otherwise. In fact, I worry that Whitman and other schools in Bethesda/Potomac areas (and even RM at this point) are increasingly becoming "private public schools." Whitman was really affluent when I attended in the 2000s, but we still had an actual cohort of real middle-class students. Not DCUM "middle-class," but actual middle-class. I'm talking about dual fed families, households where one parent was a teacher for MCPS, and even a handful of students with a parent or parents who worked in high-paying blue-collar jobs. You won't find any families like that in Whitman anymore. In the next decade, there will be almost no kids at Whitman whose parents didn't buy their house (at least partially) with family money unless MoCo strives to bring more desperately needed affordable housing in the Whitman catchment.

I can just tell you that most people at my country club do private school, and most of the people I know in the 2+ million homes in 20817 do private school.

Some are family money. Many are entrepreneurs and other high earning professionals.

I think this pretty much sums it up. I've lived in Bethesda and Chevy Chase for a number of years now. Much of this school discussion can be reduced to basic human nature. For the very wealthy and privileged - the country club demographic - they will never send their children to a W school. Projecting status and exclusivity is very important to them. Nothing anyone says is going to convince them that sending a kid to Whitman is more valuable than sending a kid to Landon or Holton Arms. Because in their world it isn't. There's no status there.

For professionals with smart well-adjusted kids in the W clusters - families earning say 500, 600 thousand a year - nothing is going to convince them that spending $100,000 a year on two kids to attend private is worth it, particularly when you can get a very high level, very rigorous education at a W school. Those kids loading up on AP classes work their asses off. But they also have the benefit of being in a large school where there are all types of kids and everybody can find a place. Plus the wide variety of extracurriculars available at these schools. It's a no-brainer for these families.

So what you see - at least in the neighborhoods I'm familiar with - is that the private school kids tend to be very wealthy or they are special needs. Families decide that publics aren't going to work for their particular child. Could be behavioral issues, ADHD, lots of things. But to succeed in public schools does require a certain amount of self-motivation and an ability to read social situations.And everyone wants the best environment for their child. For many special needs kids who need more attention, privates probably are better.

Nothing anyone says here is going to change anyone's opinion. People live in their realities.

To the poster who said you can't take multivariable calculus in a public school here, yes you can. Whitman certainly offers it.

Spoken as someone who clearly has no direct experience with top private schools.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:IF both W schools and privates were free, what would you choose?

I am a new poster and have not been able to read all 46 pages of this thread but I did skim through a it and approached our choice much like you posed this question. We are in a W cluster but had considered private. Particularly Bullis. We decided to stick with our W cluster for many reasons but mostly because the diversity that you speak of at Bullis turned us off. We went to a football game and all the kids they bussed in were playing and the remaining student section was not diverse at all. I also truly believe that the math curriculm in our W cluster is leaps and bounds ahead of Bullis. Other factors lead to our decision as well but in the end even if it was free we decided to pass on private. In my opinion Private is worth it if you go for name recognition which is therefore only worth it when looking for single sex schools and that was not appealing for us.

Students who play sports are also students who are in the classroom. The Bulls football program is one of the best high school football program in the US. It has phenomenal athletes that earn the attention of D1 schools for college scholarship opportunities. Same for other athletic programs at the school.

A better measurement of the academic atmosphere is a tour of the school during the school day. Unlike public schools, athletes wear the same uniform as all other students. There’s nothing on them that represents themselves as a football player.

For math, child left Churchill for Bullis specifically for their STEM program. There were more advanced classes at Bullis for math and electives not offered at Churchill. The peer group for advanced math was around 12 students to Churchill’s 2 (hence why my son, if he stayed at Churchill, wouldn’t have a math class past 11th grade). The top math, science, and AP economics classes were taught by university professors. The quality of instruction and availability for help during office hours was also a huge benefit at Bullis.

Finally, help with the college search process was another benefit of private. Counselors at Bullis have a small fraction of students compared to their MCPS counterparts. Bullis counselors actually have several meetings with students to help them come up with a list of colleges, read essays, and provide feedback. They also help students chunk out the deadlines. At Churchill there was zero help with navigating the college process.

dp.. I call BS. It's a simple numbers game. Public schools like the Ws have way more students than Bullis, and many are also UMC. There are way more high achieving students in public schools than there are at Bullis simply because there are more public school students than private schools.

if your DS was that advanced in math he could've gone to Blair STEM, but it seems to me that he is probably not intuitively advanced as much as he is coached to be advanced. And yes, a lot of public school students are also tutored and coached to be advanced in math, as well, but they don't send their kids to private because they think private is much more advanced in STEM than Blair, for example.

BS meter is showing all the way to the right.

PP - this thread is asking if money wasn’t a factor, would you send your child to a W school or private. Blair is not a W school nor do most people in Potomac wish to put their child on a 45 minute bus ride to Silver Spring for access to a challenging math class and a segregated school within a school.

You may not agree with our choice, however, Bullis was a wonderful experience for my son. Bullis met his needs and provided a more challenging curriculum than Churchill. Bullis was also only 10 minutes from our house.

How did Bullis provide a more challenging math curriculum than your W school?

I’m not the person you’re responding to, but we’ve posted course catalogs for private schools repeatedly and compared them to W schools. The course offerings at private schools on the high school level are just as advanced if not more than the W schools.

Course offerings in catalogs are marketing brochures. It doesn't mean that the courses are taught every year. It will depend on if there are enough students who want or have the ability to take those classes. Works the same way in public schools and colleges. There are course offerings in catalogues that aren't always offered every year at that particular school.

That’s your excuse? Ok, so post proof that private schools don’t actually offer the advanced courses as much as public schools do. Otherwise it’s just obvious you’re grasping at straws to crap on private schools.

? not an excuse. Just stating the way it is. Colleges do the same.

But to use it as a way to argue private schools are weaker in math, you’d have to prove that the advanced courses are offered less often than at public schools.

ok, then maybe the Bullis parent could tell which advanced math course their kid took at Bullis that a W school didn't have, and also how many kids were in that advanced math class?

The kids in the advanced math classes in public are getting outside enrichment for math. It’s not from the teachings of public.

Nonsense. My kid at a W took multivariable calculus and I can assure that neither he nor his peers used tutors or outside help. We moved our kids from private to public for lots of reasons, and more advanced math and science classes was very much one of those reasons. The schools may be larger, but within each of those W schools there is a very significant cohort of smart, disciplined, and motivated students who do not need the coddling that so many private school kids do. No regrets.

Not sure which private school you came from or what anonymous W school your children attended. However, not all W high schools offer math beyond Calculus BC. We were in this situation and either my child had to transfer to a public school other than our neighborhood W school or not have an opportunity to participate in after school athletics so he could travel to Montgomery College for math. Transportation to the other school or to Montgomery College had to be supplied by our family. MCPS said that because there were not enough students in our school to take multi variable so it wasn’t being offered.

How recently?

Wootton, Whitman, and WJ all advertise it in their catalog currently.

And virtual academy is being deployed more since COVID, avoiding commute.

The school was Wootton and it was Pre-COVID. The catalog doesn’t guarantee that the class will be available for your child. They need a minimum number of students and a qualified teacher for the class to exist. It’s easier for MCPS to require students to go to other locations or simply say anything above Calculus BC is an elective. They also suggested that my child not take math his Junior and Senior year of high school.

This is where a private school would have been an advantage. A private school would not require a minimum number of students. If needed, the student would have a one on one session with a teacher. That's what you get for paying the big bucks (in addition to the other benefits).

In fact, when my daughter was in a small parochial in middle school for $10K a year tuition, there was only one student in her class who was taking Algebra 2 as an 8th grader. She had a one on one class daily with a math specialist. Ironically, she ended up going to an MCPS magnet for HS. Probably displaced some mcps middle school student for the spot.

Please stop lying. Few private schools would provide a 1-1 class for a student and usually only if it occurs once the student has already been enrolled for some time and for a required class. For instance a kid in a K-8 who advances quicker than their peers. It is a rarity that this occurs in private. And privates like it this way. So much so that if you ask about advance programming, special education, or anything out of the norm they will politely acknowledge that depending on the circumstances it may not best the school. If you’re going to talk about private school at least provide the facts.

Oh and MCPS like all schools in Maryland requires 4yrs of Math in HS. So if a kid had maxed out the math available in their HS they would be required to provide them access to math in another location even a college if necessary.

You’re spewing such crap about differentiation in private schools. My kid was given more challenging math in kindergarten in a K-8. We didn’t ask for it. They just gave her extra work.

In class differentiation is not the same as needing a higher level class. Learn the difference before responding. And in class differentiation is provided in private and public.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IF both W schools and privates were free, what would you choose?

I am a new poster and have not been able to read all 46 pages of this thread but I did skim through a it and approached our choice much like you posed this question. We are in a W cluster but had considered private. Particularly Bullis. We decided to stick with our W cluster for many reasons but mostly because the diversity that you speak of at Bullis turned us off. We went to a football game and all the kids they bussed in were playing and the remaining student section was not diverse at all. I also truly believe that the math curriculm in our W cluster is leaps and bounds ahead of Bullis. Other factors lead to our decision as well but in the end even if it was free we decided to pass on private. In my opinion Private is worth it if you go for name recognition which is therefore only worth it when looking for single sex schools and that was not appealing for us.

Students who play sports are also students who are in the classroom. The Bulls football program is one of the best high school football program in the US. It has phenomenal athletes that earn the attention of D1 schools for college scholarship opportunities. Same for other athletic programs at the school.

A better measurement of the academic atmosphere is a tour of the school during the school day. Unlike public schools, athletes wear the same uniform as all other students. There’s nothing on them that represents themselves as a football player.

For math, child left Churchill for Bullis specifically for their STEM program. There were more advanced classes at Bullis for math and electives not offered at Churchill. The peer group for advanced math was around 12 students to Churchill’s 2 (hence why my son, if he stayed at Churchill, wouldn’t have a math class past 11th grade). The top math, science, and AP economics classes were taught by university professors. The quality of instruction and availability for help during office hours was also a huge benefit at Bullis.

Finally, help with the college search process was another benefit of private. Counselors at Bullis have a small fraction of students compared to their MCPS counterparts. Bullis counselors actually have several meetings with students to help them come up with a list of colleges, read essays, and provide feedback. They also help students chunk out the deadlines. At Churchill there was zero help with navigating the college process.

dp.. I call BS. It's a simple numbers game. Public schools like the Ws have way more students than Bullis, and many are also UMC. There are way more high achieving students in public schools than there are at Bullis simply because there are more public school students than private schools.

if your DS was that advanced in math he could've gone to Blair STEM, but it seems to me that he is probably not intuitively advanced as much as he is coached to be advanced. And yes, a lot of public school students are also tutored and coached to be advanced in math, as well, but they don't send their kids to private because they think private is much more advanced in STEM than Blair, for example.

BS meter is showing all the way to the right.

PP - this thread is asking if money wasn’t a factor, would you send your child to a W school or private. Blair is not a W school nor do most people in Potomac wish to put their child on a 45 minute bus ride to Silver Spring for access to a challenging math class and a segregated school within a school.

You may not agree with our choice, however, Bullis was a wonderful experience for my son. Bullis met his needs and provided a more challenging curriculum than Churchill. Bullis was also only 10 minutes from our house.

How did Bullis provide a more challenging math curriculum than your W school?

I’m not the person you’re responding to, but we’ve posted course catalogs for private schools repeatedly and compared them to W schools. The course offerings at private schools on the high school level are just as advanced if not more than the W schools.

Course offerings in catalogs are marketing brochures. It doesn't mean that the courses are taught every year. It will depend on if there are enough students who want or have the ability to take those classes. Works the same way in public schools and colleges. There are course offerings in catalogues that aren't always offered every year at that particular school.

That’s your excuse? Ok, so post proof that private schools don’t actually offer the advanced courses as much as public schools do. Otherwise it’s just obvious you’re grasping at straws to crap on private schools.

? not an excuse. Just stating the way it is. Colleges do the same.

But to use it as a way to argue private schools are weaker in math, you’d have to prove that the advanced courses are offered less often than at public schools.

ok, then maybe the Bullis parent could tell which advanced math course their kid took at Bullis that a W school didn't have, and also how many kids were in that advanced math class?

The kids in the advanced math classes in public are getting outside enrichment for math. It’s not from the teachings of public.

Nonsense. My kid at a W took multivariable calculus and I can assure that neither he nor his peers used tutors or outside help. We moved our kids from private to public for lots of reasons, and more advanced math and science classes was very much one of those reasons. The schools may be larger, but within each of those W schools there is a very significant cohort of smart, disciplined, and motivated students who do not need the coddling that so many private school kids do. No regrets.

No peers getting tutors or outside help? Now I know you are a damn liar. Plenty are doing this and if you don’t know, then you know nothing.

There are some who do, and some who don't. My DC did not. Never ever needed math tutoring. I don't think I looked at DC's math work after ES. DC passed the UMD mvc exam, 5 on AP calc, all self studied, and DC is not alone. So yea, there are some who don't need tutors for advanced math. Are you so ignorant that you don't realize how many well educated parents send their kids to public schools? Doctors, scientists, lawyers, IT professionals, engineers.. those are my kids' friends parents, including us.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m not sure why a PP feels so defensive about MCPS. MCPS class sizes are ridiculously too large for students to receive individualized instruction. MCPS is demoralized by the demands due to the staffing shortages, unaddressed misconduct by superiors, and low pay.Finally, private schools returned to in person instruction for the 2020-2021 school year while MCPS remained online. Private schools never adjusted their curriculum during the pandemic and thus, students didn’t experience learning loss like their MCPS peers.

Keep fooling yourself that MCPS is superior school system. MCPS is the free option, not the academically superior option. Like another PP said, in life you get what you pay for.

While I certainly recognize the problems facing MCPS and other public school districts, private schools are not superior for everyone. DD's best friend hated their private. Other parents would kill to have their kids there but for her it was not really challenging, not enough smart kids, not enough ideas. She felt the classroom discussion was always mediocre because only a small percentage of kids were actually smart and motivated. She was bored. Most of them came from similar backgrounds. In her public magnet the entire class is smart and motivated and the perspectives are more eye-opening. FWIW, DD is very smart and likes the private.

+1 Can't have too many diverse opinions when the class sizes are super small, and where being "different" could mean being a social outcast. Speaking of which, not a lot of social groups to choose from. If you are on the oust with your friend group, you don't have a lot of other friend groups to choose from in a small private. That could be a death sentence for a kid who is not popular or just different.

I understand the desire for small class sizes and more focused students in the class. Those would be good reasons to put your kid in private.

I feel like you all think these schools have like 20 kids in a grade. Most top private schools have grades with 50-60 kids. Not a 2,000 person MCPS high school, but also not minuscule.

Bullis has around 100 per grade in high school. The largest class for my child had 20 students. The smallest had 10.

One huge difference that allowed diversity in the discussions was that all students are expected to actively participate. It’s a mandatory part of the class grade.

My child said that at Hoover and Churchill he could sit in the back of the classroom and tune out. The same students answered teacher questions so everyone else could be quiet if they wanted.

At Bullis, some classes were taught in a circle in which everyone could see each other. My child said he had to do the homework and follow along in class because he would be asked questions by the teacher several times in class. He didn’t want to be unprepared in front of his peers.

For those who have a preconceived idea of the types of students who attend private schools, I would encourage you to tour campus on a school day and compare the diversity to a W school. Students wear uniforms so there’s no popularity contest based on clothes. Bullying of others is a dismissible offense so my son thought as a transfer student he was more welcomed there than Churchill.

I will just leave it at this - Sure, there are very wealthy students at Bullis. It’s in Potomac after all. However, my son has also made friends from good families with limited means so they lived in neighborhoods where poverty is an issue and there is gun violence in their neighborhoods. Bullis offers a far better education than their local public schools, with transportation and scholarships so they travel long distances for the opportunities. Bullis has a wonderful counseling department that has hands on help so students whose parents don’t understand the college search process are not left to miss out on scholarships and admission deadlines. Churchill has only one College and Career counselor for about 500 students so there is very little help with the process. One my child’s friends described in an English class the first time a white adult at a public park called him the N word. A very important lesson about the power and hurt words can cause. Students feel even in the small classes that Bullis has that it is safe place to share without judgement. For a school that gained national news attention for N Word cards, I don’t think this friend would have shared the same experience in a class discussion at Churchill.

yes, but the point is that most kids at these expensive private schools will not have too divergent opinions. Most of them come from the same SES/income background. Hard to have a discussion with divergent opinions when most kids are from the same class background.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it really depends on the kid. I had one go through Whitman and one through private HS. They are different kids with different needs. Both equally smart, but the one in private got lost in the shuffle of Pyle and needed a smaller environment to thrive. The one who went to Whitman didn’t need a smaller environment and benefited from the broader course selection at Whitman. Yes, MCPS can be a joke with some of their grading policies. But for the self-motivated kid that doesn’t matter.

Self-motivation doesn’t make up for a low expectation environment. I went to a top private high school and was surrounded by self-motivated kids, many of whom went there because we were motivated to want a more challenging environment.

I’m not sure why you all cast private schools as these places that cater to kids who need coddling or who aren’t self-motivated learners. That simply isn’t true for the top private schools.

dp.. there are a lot self motivated kids in public schools, and they challenge themselves by taking the advanced courses, multiple IB/AP courses and exams, all while doing a lot of extra curricular activities. The larger publics with a lot of these high achieving kids offer a lot more advanced classes. That's the power of economies of scale.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IF both W schools and privates were free, what would you choose?

I am a new poster and have not been able to read all 46 pages of this thread but I did skim through a it and approached our choice much like you posed this question. We are in a W cluster but had considered private. Particularly Bullis. We decided to stick with our W cluster for many reasons but mostly because the diversity that you speak of at Bullis turned us off. We went to a football game and all the kids they bussed in were playing and the remaining student section was not diverse at all. I also truly believe that the math curriculm in our W cluster is leaps and bounds ahead of Bullis. Other factors lead to our decision as well but in the end even if it was free we decided to pass on private. In my opinion Private is worth it if you go for name recognition which is therefore only worth it when looking for single sex schools and that was not appealing for us.

Students who play sports are also students who are in the classroom. The Bulls football program is one of the best high school football program in the US. It has phenomenal athletes that earn the attention of D1 schools for college scholarship opportunities. Same for other athletic programs at the school.

A better measurement of the academic atmosphere is a tour of the school during the school day. Unlike public schools, athletes wear the same uniform as all other students. There’s nothing on them that represents themselves as a football player.

For math, child left Churchill for Bullis specifically for their STEM program. There were more advanced classes at Bullis for math and electives not offered at Churchill. The peer group for advanced math was around 12 students to Churchill’s 2 (hence why my son, if he stayed at Churchill, wouldn’t have a math class past 11th grade). The top math, science, and AP economics classes were taught by university professors. The quality of instruction and availability for help during office hours was also a huge benefit at Bullis.

Finally, help with the college search process was another benefit of private. Counselors at Bullis have a small fraction of students compared to their MCPS counterparts. Bullis counselors actually have several meetings with students to help them come up with a list of colleges, read essays, and provide feedback. They also help students chunk out the deadlines. At Churchill there was zero help with navigating the college process.

dp.. I call BS. It's a simple numbers game. Public schools like the Ws have way more students than Bullis, and many are also UMC. There are way more high achieving students in public schools than there are at Bullis simply because there are more public school students than private schools.

if your DS was that advanced in math he could've gone to Blair STEM, but it seems to me that he is probably not intuitively advanced as much as he is coached to be advanced. And yes, a lot of public school students are also tutored and coached to be advanced in math, as well, but they don't send their kids to private because they think private is much more advanced in STEM than Blair, for example.

BS meter is showing all the way to the right.

PP - this thread is asking if money wasn’t a factor, would you send your child to a W school or private. Blair is not a W school nor do most people in Potomac wish to put their child on a 45 minute bus ride to Silver Spring for access to a challenging math class and a segregated school within a school.

You may not agree with our choice, however, Bullis was a wonderful experience for my son. Bullis met his needs and provided a more challenging curriculum than Churchill. Bullis was also only 10 minutes from our house.

How did Bullis provide a more challenging math curriculum than your W school?

I’m not the person you’re responding to, but we’ve posted course catalogs for private schools repeatedly and compared them to W schools. The course offerings at private schools on the high school level are just as advanced if not more than the W schools.

Course offerings in catalogs are marketing brochures. It doesn't mean that the courses are taught every year. It will depend on if there are enough students who want or have the ability to take those classes. Works the same way in public schools and colleges. There are course offerings in catalogues that aren't always offered every year at that particular school.

That’s your excuse? Ok, so post proof that private schools don’t actually offer the advanced courses as much as public schools do. Otherwise it’s just obvious you’re grasping at straws to crap on private schools.

? not an excuse. Just stating the way it is. Colleges do the same.

But to use it as a way to argue private schools are weaker in math, you’d have to prove that the advanced courses are offered less often than at public schools.

ok, then maybe the Bullis parent could tell which advanced math course their kid took at Bullis that a W school didn't have, and also how many kids were in that advanced math class?

The kids in the advanced math classes in public are getting outside enrichment for math. It’s not from the teachings of public.

That doesn't answer the question. Also, if you don't think private school kids get outside enrichment, you're just as ignorant about private school kids. I know for a fact that some of the math teachers in MCPS have advanced degrees in math; one I know has an advanced math degree from MIT, and the teacher is certified to teach advanced math courses. Private school teachers don't need any certifications.

I'll ask again.. and please answer the question, not go off on a tangent.

Can the Bullis parent tell us which advanced math course their kid took at Bullis that a W school didn't have, and also how many kids were in that advanced math class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not sure why a PP feels so defensive about MCPS. MCPS class sizes are ridiculously too large for students to receive individualized instruction. MCPS is demoralized by the demands due to the staffing shortages, unaddressed misconduct by superiors, and low pay.Finally, private schools returned to in person instruction for the 2020-2021 school year while MCPS remained online. Private schools never adjusted their curriculum during the pandemic and thus, students didn’t experience learning loss like their MCPS peers.

Keep fooling yourself that MCPS is superior school system. MCPS is the free option, not the academically superior option. Like another PP said, in life you get what you pay for.

While I certainly recognize the problems facing MCPS and other public school districts, private schools are not superior for everyone. DD's best friend hated their private. Other parents would kill to have their kids there but for her it was not really challenging, not enough smart kids, not enough ideas. She felt the classroom discussion was always mediocre because only a small percentage of kids were actually smart and motivated. She was bored. Most of them came from similar backgrounds. In her public magnet the entire class is smart and motivated and the perspectives are more eye-opening. FWIW, DD is very smart and likes the private.

+1 Can't have too many diverse opinions when the class sizes are super small, and where being "different" could mean being a social outcast. Speaking of which, not a lot of social groups to choose from. If you are on the oust with your friend group, you don't have a lot of other friend groups to choose from in a small private. That could be a death sentence for a kid who is not popular or just different.

I understand the desire for small class sizes and more focused students in the class. Those would be good reasons to put your kid in private.

I feel like you all think these schools have like 20 kids in a grade. Most top private schools have grades with 50-60 kids. Not a 2,000 person MCPS high school, but also not minuscule.

Bullis has around 100 per grade in high school. The largest class for my child had 20 students. The smallest had 10.

One huge difference that allowed diversity in the discussions was that all students are expected to actively participate. It’s a mandatory part of the class grade.

My child said that at Hoover and Churchill he could sit in the back of the classroom and tune out. The same students answered teacher questions so everyone else could be quiet if they wanted.

At Bullis, some classes were taught in a circle in which everyone could see each other. My child said he had to do the homework and follow along in class because he would be asked questions by the teacher several times in class. He didn’t want to be unprepared in front of his peers.

For those who have a preconceived idea of the types of students who attend private schools, I would encourage you to tour campus on a school day and compare the diversity to a W school. Students wear uniforms so there’s no popularity contest based on clothes. Bullying of others is a dismissible offense so my son thought as a transfer student he was more welcomed there than Churchill.

I will just leave it at this - Sure, there are very wealthy students at Bullis. It’s in Potomac after all. However, my son has also made friends from good families with limited means so they lived in neighborhoods where poverty is an issue and there is gun violence in their neighborhoods. Bullis offers a far better education than their local public schools, with transportation and scholarships so they travel long distances for the opportunities. Bullis has a wonderful counseling department that has hands on help so students whose parents don’t understand the college search process are not left to miss out on scholarships and admission deadlines. Churchill has only one College and Career counselor for about 500 students so there is very little help with the process. One my child’s friends described in an English class the first time a white adult at a public park called him the N word. A very important lesson about the power and hurt words can cause. Students feel even in the small classes that Bullis has that it is safe place to share without judgement. For a school that gained national news attention for N Word cards, I don’t think this friend would have shared the same experience in a class discussion at Churchill.

yes, but the point is that most kids at these expensive private schools will not have too divergent opinions. Most of them come from the same SES/income background. Hard to have a discussion with divergent opinions when most kids are from the same class background.

And you think it’s different at W schools with <5% FARMS and all the kids from one geographic area? Give me a fking break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it really depends on the kid. I had one go through Whitman and one through private HS. They are different kids with different needs. Both equally smart, but the one in private got lost in the shuffle of Pyle and needed a smaller environment to thrive. The one who went to Whitman didn’t need a smaller environment and benefited from the broader course selection at Whitman. Yes, MCPS can be a joke with some of their grading policies. But for the self-motivated kid that doesn’t matter.

Self-motivation doesn’t make up for a low expectation environment. I went to a top private high school and was surrounded by self-motivated kids, many of whom went there because we were motivated to want a more challenging environment.

I’m not sure why you all cast private schools as these places that cater to kids who need coddling or who aren’t self-motivated learners. That simply isn’t true for the top private schools.

dp.. there are a lot self motivated kids in public schools, and they challenge themselves by taking the advanced courses, multiple IB/AP courses and exams, all while doing a lot of extra curricular activities. The larger publics with a lot of these high achieving kids offer a lot more advanced classes. That's the power of economies of scale.

Do I have to post course catalogs again?