Reply to Stay at TT or Retire to Suburbs

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

Again, people are making these ridiculous, very absolute statements. The world is not so black and white. Each has its pros and cons. Private has smaller classes, great resources, and usually more flexibility. And the resources of NYC. Some publics because of their size can offer more classes, more exposure to the real world, plenty of academic rigor, etc. They also have more government bureaucracy and less flexibility (which isn't always a bad thing, but often is)

I grew up in a very nice NJ suburb (but not Summit or Millburn, which are the two people like to cite). I went to high school with the children of several PhD Bell Labs researchers (look it up if you don't know it), multiple Columbia and NYU professors, and partners at top law firms. I did not grow up in Princeton but there are lots of incredibly smart Princeton professors and IAS researchers who send their kids to public schools in the area. There are plenty of very bright, successful (not sure how you define that) people who choose to live in the suburbs for whatever reasons. So these absolutist statements that all the smart people are in NYC are ignorant.

And looking at medians or means or whatever else for these schools is useless. Academically I lived in a bubble with the other kids who were at the top of my class. And those kids were just as smart and have accomplished just as much as the NYC private TT alums of my generation. But there were plenty of kids who were not as bright or motivated. And in HS these kids were not in my academic classes. And being exposed to them in homeroom, gym, activities, sports teams, etc. was a great life experience for me. And it has led me to learn to not be as narrow minded and judgy as some of the posters here who refuse to acknowledge anything good about the suburbs. Things have definitely changed at schools like this since then, probably more for the worse than the better (see how I can admit that my side is not without holes - try it sometime). But they still have a lot to offer for a highly motivated student and they will still do well, get into excellent schools and achieve there.

Note that I write this as a parent of a NYC private school student, who chose this school over SHSAT schools after being in excellent NYC public lower schools. So I have seen it all. Have you?[/quote]

Yes, I went through public school system in Princeton.  I got a very good education.  Even so, inferior to what my kids got in private school in every respect.  I also sent my kids to a wealthy suburban public elementary (rated 10/10 on best schools).  Saw first hand that they were abandoning tracking, which is also happening in DC area schools and discussed frequently on this board (and being implemented by Mamdani in NY).  Heard teachers complaining about curriculum being scripted by central office that they could not deviate from.  Saw my kids spend lots of classroom time preparing for yearly state proficiency tests, even doing mock questions on a regular basis.  Neither my kids or I had a class size smaller than 25 kids.  [/quote]

I guess it depends.  Near me, at the private school options are inferior in stem offerings and some of the suburban publics  are strong in stem.[/quote]

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