Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We toured two highly regarded private schools for HS. Also applied to highly regarded public schools. After the second tour, we discussed the private schools and realized that our student would not be happy at a private school. While there are things they loved, there were things they hated, and the payoff wasn't substantial enough for the financial sacrifice. We may have had different conversations if they didn't get into their top choice public HS.

Curious what those things were that tipped the scales?

1. They did not want to attend a religious HS, so that eliminated some choices automatically.
2. One school had grade levels mixed together. So high schoolers shared space with elementary school students as in classrooms were on the same floor. That was a hard no. The reaction was visceral and hilarious.
3. We thought they would appreciate the freedom of one of the other schools. Nope. They said it felt chaotic. They like order.

One in DCPS for elementary, the other in private for MS. Older one went through DCPS through sixth grade, and we were seriously underwhelmed with MS. Kid did "fine", but was not thriving. It was difficult to get any contact with the teachers and when we had an issue and managed (after three weeks) to talk to one teacher, she literally said "I have 120 students, I don't know your kid...".

Private school has turned out to be much more academically rigorous, about equally diverse, except the kids all mix, as opposed to PS where the kids self-segregated... the biggest surprise and the thing that has us thinking about private for the second is that socially it's much better—there was constant cheating and a lot of "who cares?" attitude in the PS... and no one EVER got in trouble for anything. We're very progressive people, but it's shocking how far DCPS has gone—in the name of fairness and decency—from any kind of sense of right/wrong, or importance of community, inclusion, etc.