Reply to Private School - has it been worth the money to you?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The best formula I see is private in the younger years then an awesome highschool, in MD,VA and even Wilson/Walls- you can't go wrong.  This sets a nurturing foundation and love for learning well including all of the play based creative ways that are so important for brain development.  I think many have it wrong pushing the private in hs to get into the good schools and fear of "bad elements" in the public schools. The heavy testing and focus on memorization pushing reading and academic skills in the rote ways they do is disputed by most experts. [/quote]

Most of the relevant academic research I've seen supports the idea that if you can only afford a limited number of years of private school, your money is much better spent at K-5 than 9-12. So much more formation take place during those years, setting in place habits (good and bad) that are much harder to change by the time kids get to high school.

But it would be so hard to tell a kid at 5th Grade graduation, "Yep, it's a great school where you've thrived and made best friends. Time to move to public school where you don't know anyone and won't get the same level of attention from teachers or enrichment."[/quote]

I think it's better to look at the individual child, rather than the research.  In our case, we were fortunate to have grandparent support for private K-5.  When the stock market slumped in 2008, the grandparents had to pull back their support.  We weren't anticipating that, and I was only working PT at the time, and so we left for public.  My oldest was in 5th grade, and he made a pretty easy transition to MCPS at the beginning of 6th grade.   (He'd known lots of neighborhood kids even though he wasn't in the neighborhood school.)  Another of my son's classmates also had to leave at the end of 5th grade for MCPS.  He was also fine in making the transition.

For high school, we sent him to private after I returned to FT work.  But if he were a stronger student, we would have kept him in MCPS.  So the transition from public to private can be made if necessary.[/quote]

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