Reply to Stay at TT or Retire to Suburbs

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There will be smart classmates and good teachers at both.  Downsides to public will be rote curriculum (current philosophy is to ensure consistency through control), teaching to the standardized test, larger class sizes, many of eliminated tracking/gifted programs at elementary and middle school levels, bureaucracy, populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources, worse overall college matriculation, grade inflation which makes it diffiuclt to stand out.  Downsides to private are cost, more legacy/donor families, less economic diversity, usually no tracking at lower school level.[/quote]

Hoo boy.

"Rote curriculum": no, the broad pedagogy is the same at both places, nobody's having you spend half of your time memorizing crap anymore.

"Teaching to the test": not really, though we did find that when we moved to NYC the teachers spent a lot more time teaching writing in general because that's a major component of the NY state exam. (but all year, and not specifically directed to state exam questions)

"Larger class sizes": suburbs barely have any gap with privates now - like 18 versus 22 - and the city is in the process of matching suburbs.

"Eliminated tracking/gifted programs": public schools do lots of tracking, if anything this more of a problem in private schools.

"Bureaucracy": seriously? how many associate deans of blahdeblah does your private school have?

"populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources": yeah, heaven forbid our kids are exposed to any of those people.

"worse overall college matriculation": sure, because the private schools have most of the rich kids.

"grade inflation": the modal GPA at Horace Mann is an A-.[/quote]

Most suburban publics no longer track at elementary and sometimes  middle it's an equity thing.  Mamdani has already indicated that he plans to do this for the very youngest grades in NYC publics.

My private is entirely run by less about six people on campus and its a K-12.  Every town has its own board of education with oversight of all schools within its boundaries.  In contrast.the NYC public school employ 2254 people in central administration, that is, people who don't work at any partiuclar school and are just bureaucracy.

My kids have 10 to 12 kids in this classes at private, and never more than 15.  Our local suburban school has 20 to 30 kids at a class, my kid's experience was on the higher end in elementary, which was when they attended.

AP classes in public schools are very geared towards the test.  My kids spent considerable time in public elementary preparing for the state standardized tests.  These tests were given at every grade level in the spring.

Nearly all suburban publics standardize their curriculum throughout the district so every class is reading the same books, and even doing the same worksheets, etc. . . again, I know this because my kids attended a suburban public and this is something that the teachers complained about a lot.  The private my kids attend allows the teachers to develop their own curriculum each year as a grade level each year at the elemtary and middle school level, with some differences between classes.[/quote]

The smartest, most successful people on the planet (rich New Yorkers) send their kids to private.  Are they dumb or delusional for doing so?  If you have the means, do likewise.  And public can be fine, but please don't tell us it is known for less bureaucracy, smaller classes, more advanced material, and better networking than the TTs.  [/quote]

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