Reply to If you send your child to private school, do you live in a good public school district?

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "If you send your child to private school, do you live in a good public school district?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We live in Fairfax County.  I am CONSTANTLY questioned by family/friends why we would even think to send kids to private schools.  Small class sizes, access to teachers and administration, moral teachings, and strong community at privates makes me want privates all the way through high school.  [/quote]

I have a 4 year old and I am thinking about sending her to private school.  The reason is my DC is a little wild and generally seems disinterested in school.  All she wants to do is play and she generally drives her preschool teacher crazy by not following directions.  Our preschool director thought a play based curriculum would be better and small classes with more attention would as well.  She thought the public schools had too much pressure to get the kids up to speed for the VA SOLs by first grade and that my DC would rebel on certain types of teaching and may fall behind.  She warned that some teachers would spend extra time with her and give her individualized attention to suit her, but many would not.

I'm torn because I did public school and thought it was fine and the public schools here have such good reputations.  I did the private school WISP-III testing for DC and the tester thought my child really needed a hands on progressive school that wasn't so rigid.  Sometimes I just don't know and think I'm being sold the private school route by people who are part of its infrastructure (most of the preschool kids at my DC's school go to privates).  But I would hate for DC to fall behind and tear DC from the private if DC like it.

My husband is skeptical, saying that's how kids are and the DC will adjust.

Money is a concern, but it's not like it is that more expensive than preschool/daycare, and aftercare now.  So it is manageable for us right now unless we have more kids.

[/quote]

PP, your DD sounds a lot like my DS.  We were also advised by his preschool that he'd do better in a private school.  We reluctantly agreed to visit a few private schools to compare them to our very well-regarded public ES and immediately understood the differences and why our DS would do better at a private.  The private schools have the ability to be creative in their approach and incorporate more "fun" and play time into their early years vs. the public schools which have to immediately gear up for testing.  Not all kids are ready to sit at a table/desk for most of the day and learn.  My DS is more willing to sit down and focus after he's had the chance to run around and play a bit, which he wouldn't be able to do at public school.  Private schools incorporate a couple of recesses, PE, art/music throughout the day.  Class sizes are much smaller and the kids get a lot of individual attention.  The teachers are really able to get to know each child and their strengths/weaknesses so that they can tailor how to present the material to each child vs. having one standard approach for the whole class.

I do think that there are certain kids that would do well in any type of school environment and public school can work really well for these kids.  However, other kids need a more individualized approach than public schools can offer.  Also, keep in mind that you DD is only 4 and will likely change a lot over the next few years.  She could start out in private school where they can accommodate her in the early years, then she could be perfectly capable of excelling in public school later on.[/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