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

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08/14/2023 23:17

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

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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.

You must be a troll. Maryland requires 4 years of math. No school would ever suggest that. They would instead encourage your child to take AP Stats or other math elective or slow down the Calc sequence by taking Calc AB first and then Calc BC.

Thank you for the name calling. Real classy.

I received that response from a Director at Central Office. The regulation doesn’t apply to math electives. When a child has exceeded Calculus BC, they are not required to take a math class all four years of high school and a school is not required to provide options for math.

Call Central Office and ask. Also ask if all W schools teach Multivariable or any other math beyond Calculus BC every year.

DP but you're wrong. They are required to take 4 years of HS math.

Troll is what you call people who are posting false information online in order to mislead people for the fun of it, for political gain or other reason.

Fact: Everyone is required to take four years of math in high school in order to graduate. You cannot be exempt from that even if you finish Calc BC. MCPS will give you a choice of Montgomery College or going to another MCPS HS that has "higher" math. You are also welcome to take math electives to fulfill that 4 year requirement. Every school knows this. Every counselor knows this. Everyone in MCPS central should know this but it's possible they do not.