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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No.

I've explained my reasoning multiple times on DCUM, but basically it boils down to private school not offering the best quality:price ratio before college.

That being said, you do pay for your child's public education - in that the best schools are in the best neighborhoods, which have expensive real estate. But at the end of your kid's K-12, you still have your house, and it will have turned into a solid investment, since everyone wants to buy into the good school district. If you pay for private instead, the money is gone.

We moved to be inbounds to the best school district that also worked for our commutes. We were house poor for a while, but now our investment has paid off.

If you can't move because you have a great mortgage, and your public school is crap... then that might be the only time when temporary private schooling might help you out. [/quote]

This reasoning, such as it is, doesn't consider, even once, the need of an individual child.

Yes, the financial component is an important consideration.  But to suggest that it is the only consideration is incredibly myopic, and really says something about the PP.  [/quote]

PP you replied to. I did not suggest it was the only consideration, but it is the most important one. My kids (one gifted, one with special needs) went through MCPS, and a brief stint in private in another country. I am the product of a posh international private in my home country. My husband survived rough public schools where he was bullied and he forced his parents to lie about their address so he could attend a public where he wasn't shoved into a locker every day. Our collective experience runs the gamut.

I taught my kids cursive and gave them a reading list of French and English classic literature every summer. I taught them everything I felt they should know that publics were not teaching. We paid for tutors and various enrichments because we weren't strapped by private tuition. And now, we can afford any college, graduate school, downpayment on homes, etc, because we invested the money we saved into the stock market.

I am here to tell you that yes, MONEY is the most important factor in your life and your children's lives. This is not something people talk about in face to face conversations, but it's the obvious truth. The arc of your children's lives is long and you don't know what the future will bring and what difference your money will make. What's clear is that with the rise of AI and the fracture of the old geopolitical order, their lives will not look at all like yours! If you have access to a relatively good public system, don't spit on it. Make it work! Your obligation to your children does not stop when they turn 18, or when they graduate from a 4 year college. There will be a lot of upheavals in their lives, that we in the western world did not experience when we were their age.

[/quote]

What about behavior and culture? I don't find it too hard to supplement academic subjects during elementary school, but if your public school has even a few severely disruptive kids it can affect your kids' behavior. Our public didn't even really have many of those kids, but the overall culture was crass, anti-education, and screen-heavy, so I pulled DS so he wouldn't spend 6+ hours a day around that environment. Those behaviors and values can creep in and become normal to a child who is surrounded by it.[/quote]

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