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[quote=Anonymous]
It is a lot of money to go K-12, no doubt, although the steep rise in tuitions in all the top private schools in DC means that the parents writing the check for grade 12 is facing a much higher burden than what they signed up for when their kid started kindergarten.  And that trend continues.

Why do people do it?  For some, the money doesn't matter and they want the best for their kids and believe a private school education is the best.  Although that is not a large percentage of the parents, it is a larger percentage than you might think.  This is DC, after all, and there are lots of parents pulling down one or even two very large incomes.  Or with family wealth.   If one parent works and makes 400k, or both parents make that together, a 35k tuition bill is readily manageable unless one is already living beyond or near the limit of one's means.

The families that receive financial aid believe they are getting something very valuable on a subsidized basis.  They too (like all parents) want the best for their kids.

Families in the middle that don't receive financial aid but have more limited means have to work harder to make it work, by sacrificing other things.  They do it because they too are sold on the value this gives to their kids.  It is not only the reputation of the school that brings value -- far more important are the smaller classes, personalized attention, opportunity to learn from peers who uniformly or almost uniformly take school seriously, and great teachers.

All that said, we have great public schools in the DC metro area too.  It could be that some parents overestimate the advantages of private school.  Some who are reluctant to go the private route for K-12 send their kids to the public schools for K-8 and then switch over to private for high school.
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