Reply to Choosing public even if private is within your budget

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "Choosing public even if private is within your budget "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Choosing the right school for your family is certainly a challenging and very personal decision. While there is no hard-and-fast rule about which type of school is better, below I've shared some of my observations from teaching.

Private schools do tend to send more frequent communications home. Particularly in the Washington, DC area, you can expect report card comments and end-of-term conferences. Administrators also tend to have high expectations for how quickly their teachers will respond to parents' calls and emails. For first-time parents in particular, this volume of communications can be a reassuring way to find out how your child is progressing in school. That said, there are still teachers who have mastered the art of the non-communication communication. They can write a one-paragraph comment or attend a 20-minute conference where very little information is conveyed. There are also public school teachers who voluntarily keep up detailed websites or send home newsletters and emails that are detailed and meaningful. It is less likely that such communication is required or expected at public schools, however.

Neither type of school is guaranteed to have better teachers. Private schools are free to hire whomever they like, regardless of state licensure, training, or education. As one example, I know of a patent attorney who taught high school science. In some cases these private school teachers can bring their interesting real-world experiences into the classroom and liven things up for students. In other cases, despite very good intentions, these private school teachers lack important knowledge of pedagogy and ability to work well with children. Public school teachers, by virtue of having had to pass licensure requirements, will have some knowledge of educational psychology and theory and will have taken at least one special education course. Public school systems also have more bureaucratic requirements about continuing professional development for teachers. On the whole I think this usually results in public school teachers taking more rigorous trainings at greater frequency, but that varies by school and district. Public schools also tend to have more formalized systems for supporting novice teachers. And if those teachers stumble along the way, there are a mentoring programs, shared lesson plans, and feedback programs that may be offered. The private schools I have personal knowledge of tend not to be as supportive of new teachers who are experiencing job hiccups. Some combination of training, experience, and working conditions has created dramatic differences in teacher retention, however. Private school teachers leave the profession at twice the rate that public school teachers do.

Private schools may have particularly attractive facilities or specialized programs that can be appealing. However, well-funded public school districts are increasingly competing with their own science, arts, technology and sports programs. At the end of the day, these facilities can add to a child's enjoyment and a family's positive perception of a school, but we don't have hard evidence that they increase the quality of an education or create better long-term outcomes.

Private schools usually have smaller class sizes than publics. Again, this is not something that has been tied to better educational outcomes. In our guts a lot of us want to believe that it is better and we prefer it for ourselves. Yet, a lot of private school teachers do not use teaching methods that take advantage of smaller class sizes; they stick to a lecture format for their lessons. Also, if the standardized test scores from private schools were available for public viewing, you would see that many of them have students who are scoring well below the fiftieth percentile.

My last point of comparison is social, which is admittedly more subjective. I think that children who are naturally positive leaders and confident in themselves do well in any environment. Children who are less secure seem to me to do better in larger schools that have a little bit of turnover in the student population each year.  They're less likely to get stuck with the same uncomfortable relationships in their classrooms year after year, and more likely to have opportunities to mix and mingle with new children each school year. The smallness of private schools is great when everything is going well, but terrible when bullying and toxic relationships spring up.              [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics