Reply to If you are Wealthy and in MCPS, what made you decide to stay in public school?

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Reply to "If you are Wealthy and in MCPS, what made you decide to stay in public school?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was a private school lifer and hated it.

Would have actually had access to better colleges if I had attended the local public schools, with more STEM classes and more activities, and without the long bus ride.

I also think it's important to interact with different people; my lilly white and Asian private school with mostly UMC families didn't prepare me appropriately for life.[/quote]
Yet you self-affiliate as wealthy, indicating that it did prepare you to be a successful contributor to society.

I think you also misunderstand how college access in public school works. Yes, kids can go to excellent colleges, particularly STEM. Kids also go to substantially worse colleges in large numbers, community college and even at “W” schools a lot of kids don’t go to college at all. These are all equal options and actually when you understand how exceptional the public students are that make it to top colleges, you realize that it’s less likely your child will be one of them.

[b]Just be forewarned now, in public school you are in your own and there are big, potentially life-altering consequences for relatively small mistakes. That’s what growing up poor and being a public school lifer taught me.

To each their own, but just be prepared that the safety net is gone and there is a bottom that I don’t think you contemplate existing[/b].[/quote]

Dp. Those were ominous statements. Can you elaborate, please?[/quote]
MCPS is trying to change this dynamic, but stupid mistakes in public school can easily leave students with criminal records. At private school, you might get expelled but unless kids do something with irreparable harm they are unlikely to call the police.

In public school, parents can be surprised by C and D grades at the end of the marking period if kids are telling you everything is fine. One semester with a 2.0 will clearly have a dramatic impact on college applications. Alternatively, private schools monitor performance closely and will intervene quickly for even just an abnormally poor result on one test.

And just to be real for a moment, kids can get lost and I’ve seen it. Fall in with the “wrong crowd” (like not just suburban privileged bad, but legitimately will end up in prison bad) and it takes a long time to deprogram that mindset. While private is not perfect and there are lots of issues, I would never believe that the bottom that private school kids could fall through would be anything close to what I’ve seen at the school I went to. I feel a great degree of sadness for what happened to some of the people I went to school with. [/quote]

I don’t know about this. I have two high schoolers and know a lot of upper middle class kids in what you would probably consider “bad” MCPS high school, and  literally there is zero overlap between “UMC going to college” kids and “headed to prison” kids. Like, they never even cross paths. My nerdy clarinet player is not getting invited to go rob people.[/quote]

You are so naive.  I was valedictorian, and my academic peer made friends with the druggies in an elective art class and it was all downhill from there. I went to an Ivy League and have a typical DC life, she ended up as a vet tech at petsmart. Still a nice person and not in prison, but as a parent not the life I want for my children. [/quote]
DP.. oh please... I went to a "rough" HS and knew people who got pregnant in HS, did drugs, etc We hung out together sometimes. But, I went onto college, and started making six figures by 30, back in the 90s.

Association in and of itself doesn't mean much.

I'm sure there are private school kids who end up on drugs and in expensive rehabs, get pregnant, and have their parents pay for their abortion.  Do the kids who associate with "those" private school kids end up in rehab, too?[/quote]

My point was the PP who said their UMC would never cross paths with the “prison” crowd. They take classes together. [/quote]
It’s bizarre right? These same folks yelling about segregated schools then say that good kids and bad kids don’t interact at all in school. [/quote]

Have to disagree. This is expected. We could have sent our kids to privates easily but wanted them to get used to dealing with the real world. [/quote]

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