Public versus private - did the private school save you any time or stress?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do so many families supplement academics? I’m truly interested.

Is it because your child is falling behind in their curriculum or you’re trying to give them an edge over their peers?

It's because the school we are at doesn't teach important things. For example for my older two FCPS didn't actually teach phonics (they do better now). So I had to teach them to read, and for the third I taught them preemptively. There's no spelling instruction. The social studies outside of 3rd, 4th, and 6th on up, is completely scattershot and misses large important chunks of history and civics. They don't teach them grammar or how to write a basic essay. Math isn't too bad, but facts are not drilled.

So we do all that at home. And I believe at our new private we won't have to. We may still supplement slightly different things - I harbor no delusions that an school is perfect - but they say cover most of what I mentioned above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do so many families supplement academics? I’m truly interested.

Is it because your child is falling behind in their curriculum or you’re trying to give them an edge over their peers?

I do it to give my kids an edge over their classmates but also because they are truly bored with math in school. My kids are smart and capable of working at a higher grade level in math, so we accelerate them and they enjoy being challenged in math. If there
was no joy in it, we wouldn't push it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do so many families supplement academics? I’m truly interested.

Is it because your child is falling behind in their curriculum or you’re trying to give them an edge over their peers?

FCPS has so many holes in their ES curriculum. I hear it is better in MS and HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do so many families supplement academics? I’m truly interested.

Is it because your child is falling behind in their curriculum or you’re trying to give them an edge over their peers?

FCPS has so many holes in their ES curriculum. I hear it is better in MS and HS.

Part of the reason we are switching to private now that our oldest is going into MS is that I don't expect the MS and HS curricula to be able to stay good. My kids are all in AAP and missing so many things in every area but math. They are generally good students, too. The MS and HS teachers can only do so much when they have to remediate everything that's missing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One advantage to private is that you can put all your kids there. It is a huge lifesaver when all of them are staying after school doing clubs/sports. We don’t have to pick up multiple kids and drive them. No more “divide and conquer”.

This is only possible if all your kids are accepted at a K-12 and then only if they all want to stay the entire time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One advantage to private is that you can put all your kids there. It is a huge lifesaver when all of them are staying after school doing clubs/sports. We don’t have to pick up multiple kids and drive them. No more “divide and conquer”.

This is only possible if all your kids are accepted at a K-12 and then only if they all want to stay the entire time.

Yes, but many local privates give preference to siblings of current students. So trying to put all kids at same school actually can help a family all get admitted the same place. .

[Anonymous]

Didn't read all the responses but to answer your original question, yes--our private does this well and its a huge reason we attend versus our public. Our two kids in 2nd and 5th get Spanish, art, music (including chorus and instrument), yoga, sports. There is quality aftercare and also a lot of fun afterschool activities including tech club, newspaper club, gardening, sports, hip hop and ballet. Obviously they don't all do all these things but being able to have school cover so much has been a lifesaver to my sanity.