I think it depends on your kid. I have lots of friends with girls who believe public school is okay until middle school.

I have an active boy who is a very quick learner. (Not saying he's gifted--saying he gets things quickly.) We feared that was a recipe for disaster and we saw nothing when we talked to the principal or toured our local school that gave us any confidence. We wanted him to do love school and there wasn't going to be much to love if he was bored out his mind.

We will revisit in later years but for right now it is the right choice.

Anonymous wrote:Kids will forget K experience for the most part if it's negative. We went with your DH's instinct, opted to try the free choice (easier to stomach a free mistake than a really expensive one) and it ended up not being a mistake. Public has worked well for us.

OP here. We are leaning towards trying out public kindergarten. As long as he can read and count to 100 by the end of kindergarten, we think he should be ok. we will meet some of the neighborhood kids since the public elementary school is about half a mile from our house compared to 10 miles away like the private school we like best. If we are not satisfied, we will switch to private school in 1st grade.

Hope we are making the right decision.

Our older child seems average academically compared to our younger child who is significantly more advanced for his age. Our 4 year old has not mastered writing his letters yet. Our not yet 2 year old knows his letters, colors and can count in multiple languages. I feel like the younger one picks up the material better than the 4 year old but he is 2 years younger.

Anonymous wrote:Kids will forget K experience for the most part if it's negative. We went with your DH's instinct, opted to try the free choice (easier to stomach a free mistake than a really expensive one) and it ended up not being a mistake. Public has worked well for us.

OP here. We are leaning towards trying out public kindergarten. As long as he can read and count to 100 by the end of kindergarten, we think he should be ok. we will meet some of the neighborhood kids since the public elementary school is about half a mile from our house compared to 10 miles away like the private school we like best. If we are not satisfied, we will switch to private school in 1st grade.

Hope we are making the right decision.

Our older child seems average academically compared to our younger child who is significantly more advanced for his age. Our 4 year old has not mastered writing his letters yet. Our not yet 2 year old knows his letters, colors and can count in multiple languages. I feel like the younger one picks up the material better than the 4 year old but he is 2 years younger.

Kids will forget K experience for the most part if it's negative. We went with your DH's instinct, opted to try the free choice (easier to stomach a free mistake than a really expensive one) and it ended up not being a mistake. Public has worked well for us.

We very happily did public for K-5, but felt that the middle school would be a poor fit so moved DC's to private at that point. Best of both worlds.

We did not go to public first - stayed at Montessori through K - started private in 1st. GT program didn't start until 4th for our public system.

Anonymous wrote:No. Based on the research I did, and knowing my kid's personality, strengths, and challenges, I felt private school for the early years was a better investment for us. Varies by kid and family of course.

+1. We visited our public and knowing our child, felt like it wouldn't be a great experience so we didn't even bother trying. We live in MoCo.

We tried out public first. Was frustrating. Moved to private for HS.

We went straight to private.

We are in a medium-quality DC public elementary school, lowish-quality public MS and low quality public HS. We could cobble together enough to do private rightaway, so did not take any chances.

My ds kid K-3rd (AAP center for third) before we switched to private. We had hoped that the AAP center would be better, but it really wasn't. I wish we hadn't wasted all those years in public.

We are in fairfax and had planned to go public through at least 3rd grade. After touring our home school, another public then a couple privates we decided we strongly preferred private starting at K (although not the tuition!)

While we thought the publics look really good and were impressed by the principals and teachers, we were blown away by the difference between public and private. For us, the biggest differences were class size, ability to differentiate/accelerate and lack of SOL testing. We were also concerned out dc would be bored in public school where presumably there would be a higher ratio of kids who haven't had any prior schooling.

Public K through 5th, then private.

No. Based on the research I did, and knowing my kid's personality, strengths, and challenges, I felt private school for the early years was a better investment for us. Varies by kid and family of course.

DH is not completely sold on private school. He thinks we should try out the free option first and see if our children get into GT/AAP. He seems more open to spending the money in high school compared to elementary school.

Did you try out public school first?

We live in Alexandria (Fairfax County) and many people seem to go public K-8 and then go the public high school route.