Is the cost of attending independent schools justified?

[Anonymous]

I have one kid in public, one in private. The private kid is thriving in an environment that absolutely is unique to private schools and that one in particular. MCPS was not a good fit. DC is getting individual attention, significant emphasis on critical thinking, writing, and other areas that DC was not getting in public. It’s completely turned around their educational experience.

My other DC is a completely different kid and thriving in public. That one doesn’t get the same rigor, unfortunately, but is an over achiever. For that kid, spending $50K/year would not be worth it by a long stretch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely not worth it- you should all stay in the publics.

Karen of private schools ☝️

Um who on dcum is not a Karen…

[Anonymous]

If you have the money, it is great to not have them treated as just a number in a public school. They can stand out better and be known in private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They cost the same as an Ivy League university and quality in many cases is comparable to a public schools? Is the cost justified? In my view its out of whack.
You might end paying 800k to learn at the end the kids get into ivy leagues because of legacy admission.

tl;dr
Attending private is entirely personal preference. Do whichever you think is best for your family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They cost the same as an Ivy League university and quality in many cases is comparable to a public schools? Is the cost justified? In my view its out of whack.
You might end paying 800k to learn at the end the kids get into ivy leagues because of legacy admission.

tl;dr
Attending private is entirely personal preference. Do whichever you think is best for your family.

Agree! But at the end of the day it wouldn’t hurt to be transparent what are you paying for. Quality of education or just networking with wealthy parents. Both might be important, but some people might have a strong preference for the former.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's it expensive to send your child to an independent private school? Yes, of course it is. For some people, money is no object. For those of us for whom money is something we need to consider, we've made life choices that allow us to send our kids to private. We opted to send them to public school for elementary and private for Middle and High School. We do not go on expensive vacations. We live modestly (old cars, small house). We believe their day-to-day experience is vastly superior to what they would receive at their zoned public and so,yes, it is worth the money for us. If you are only interested in the ROI on the basis of where your kids matriculate for college, you are not a family who should send your child to private.

+1.

It's so family and reason dependent, which is why some variant of this question gets asked here weekly. But the above encapsulates it pretty well. For whatever reason, the experience is better enough for the kids and the family that the cost seems worth it.

This is, of course, the only correct answer. We both went to public schools, our parents were public school teachers, and we moved to the suburbs from DC specifically to stay in public schools rather than go private. Our kid went to public school for 10 years. He was at a large, generally well-regarded HS school that we targeted when we moved to the suburbs - we chose this district intentionally.

And it just wasn't working. He was unhappy, sort of gliding along, and beginning to struggle socially and academically because of it. While they tried to help, faculty and staff can only do so much in classes of 25+ kids. For junior year, we moved to a small private that is suited for him - not one of the high profile ones that are discussed so often here (and often leave a bad impression), but one that we, and he, thought would be a good fit. And it's been fantastic. He has re-engaged socially, has a great group of friends, is interested in his classes (some of them at least - never the math ones), and is thriving.

This isn't a knock on our public HS - about half the kids on our block attend, are happy there, and are crushing it. The other half started out in public, and like us, found it didn't work for various reasons, and now are at all different independent schools. Interestingly, we don't know of many kids who started off in K at a private.

TL;DR - it depends on the kid, and the school. People who claim that privates are a waste of money and provide an inferior education and experience in all circumstances are just as ill-informed as people who claims privates are always better than public school.

[Anonymous]

NP. There is never going to be a good answer to this.

We live in a district that is considered excellent and pulled our kids to private school when the “excellent” middle school assigned three whole books to read in three years of middle school. My kids who did private middle school read more books in the summer before sixth grade than my eldest did throughout all of public middle school.

Also, my oldest in public middle school stopped drinking anything at school so DC didn’t have to use the bathrooms because the bathrooms were so gross and unsafe.

This is in a district that people move to for the schools.

Looking back, not only was it worth it but we would have paid double.