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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Important to find a private school that isn't tiny.  It's just not a good way to go socially to have a tiny crowd - kids need that diversity and ability to find their tribe.  Once we changed out to a school with 80 kids per grade, they and us are so much happier.  The limited population means that it's all a clique - if you don't get along with one, you aren't going to get along with any.  It really is not conducive to a happy environment.  Even if you do get joy out it, as the years progress, life changes and you have to be able to adapt and get a long with a wider group of people.

Important to find a school that is not going to baby the kids.  We moved from a school that constantly gave additional make up chances for papers/exams to upper elementary and it's not doing our kids any good.  Public won't do that and there's something to be said for needing to learn from your mistakes upfront - you have to take responsibility for doing the work.

Definitely the long long summers and many days off but honestly depending on the school and public school zone, it could be a wash.  Typically speaking though, the summers are going longer in private.  13 weeks is a LONG summer!

I don't feel that the money thing is a huge deal nor the bullying/snobbery.  I think you find good, nice, bad, difficult people everywhere.  As long as you have a diverse population.  You are obviously more likely to find well-to -do families in private settings but again, good and nice people who have money are still good and nice :)  We have several very well to do families we know in public - I mean - you will find them throughout DMV area cause we all live in a bubble.

We did K-2 in private  and it was a great experience.  We did the rest of elementary in pubic and it was terrible.  Middle school public has been much better.  It really just depends on the teachers.

Public is good for the regular kid who is fine with everything.  Good student, strong identity and can make friends easily, strong academic aptitude ie they like school/learning/responsible.  My kids love their private school - they say they learn in an innovative, interesting way and it's just more in depth.  You really have to find that right school though - NOT ALL privates are as good as a public school and not all public schools suck.  The biggest difference however is that the public school mandate of Common Core and teaching for tests is really tough for true critical thinking.  You basically are learning how to take tests.  That's not a bad thing I guess but in the long term, having a life as an adult, I'm not sure how that really helps you.  [/quote]

Having gone from public to private and back to private - this posts says it best.  We thought our kid was getting a stellar in-depth education and she probably was - but the public school kids are easily ahead of her.  So we are now paying catch up.[/quote]

NP. This is just so school-dependent. We had the opposite experience. Our kid who was in the supposedly hardest classes in his public middle school was shockingly behind when entering competitive private high school. He went from advanced math in public to remedial math in private. I hadn’t realized how far behind he was.

I just don’t think things can be generalized, people need to look hard at the exact schools they are comparing. There are excellent private schools and excellent public schools. I wish my kid had been lucky enough to experience an excellent public middle school, I could have saved a lot of money. [/quote][/quote]

I totally agree with PP. This is so school dependent that there's no point in making these broad generalizations when making specific decisions. I now wish we had bought a house in a better school district for middle and high school. But at this point, moving probably an even more expensive option than private for high school, so unfortunately we have to do private school for academic rigor. [/quote]

Depending on the school there is far more rigor in public as most offer honors and AP classes and more options as they have a larger school population.  Better means richer which isn't always better.
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Definitely not the case for our zoned school. It really does depend on the school. I would say that people on this forum are usually lucky to have good, high-performing public school options. This just isn't the case for us. There are a lot of so-called "AP" classes but most kids who they push into the AP courses so that their AP enrollment stats look good are not actually able to pass the exam. There are also disruptive behavior issues at our MS and HS. [/quote]

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