Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're the opposite. Both of us have advanced degrees and neither have ever attended anything but private schools. Our kids are in public. We know it's not worth the money.

I find this fascinating and something I hear often. Just wondering why you don't give credit where credit is due.

I am curious. How does the PP (with their private school that led to advanced degrees) know they would have been the same having gone to public - having never gone to public.

DH and I grew up middle class suburbs and we both went to private and state schools (gasp!!) We moved our oldest to private in 6th and it was the best decision for 6-8th. She is in 9th and I think she could have went back to a public high school but she wanted to stay private. Our youngest two are in public. One will definitely move but the other should be fine in public. Depends on the child, personality, schools available to them and $$$.

Anonymous wrote:We're the opposite. Both of us have advanced degrees and neither have ever attended anything but private schools. Our kids are in public. We know it's not worth the money.

I find this fascinating and something I hear often. Just wondering why you don't give credit where credit is due.

Spouse and I both went to public. Our plan was for kids to do public (bought house with that in mind). When it was time for kindergarten and we saw the overcrowding, lack of physical activity (PE & recess), large classroom sizes (teacher/student ratio) limited arts/science, we opted to go private, K-8, and it has been great for us. As we approach high school, we will look at both public and private to see what will be the best fit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup. Public school ain't what it used to be, and it wasn't ever really any good where we live now. DH and I grew up in upper middle class suburbs with great schools but we now live in a city without good public schools and with great privates.

Meaning what, specifically?

Not PP, but NCLB, emphasis on standardized testing, scapegoating of teachers, deskilling of the profession all strike me as big changes over the past 20 or so years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup. Public school ain't what it used to be, and it wasn't ever really any good where we live now. DH and I grew up in upper middle class suburbs with great schools but we now live in a city without good public schools and with great privates.

Meaning what, specifically?

And which school? We all know the experience varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from school to school.

Anonymous wrote:Yup. Public school ain't what it used to be, and it wasn't ever really any good where we live now. DH and I grew up in upper middle class suburbs with great schools but we now live in a city without good public schools and with great privates.

Meaning what, specifically?

We were also both public school grads - one of us here in MCPS and the other in NYC. We planned to send our child to public, but it was very apparent that the public schools were not a good fit right now. We hope to send our kids to public later - I think the biggest criticisms (from my perspective) are about K-6...the rigidity in the application of 2.0, the oversized classrooms/schools, poor student/teacher ratio, very limited play each day, longer class days.

Thanks for sharing 0734.

Anonymous wrote:07:34 -- I'm curious which school you chose, since you are an educator. Did you find in the end that the school delivered on its promises and your child was better than if he/she attended the local public?

GDS, it delivered on its promises, and DC got a better education than should could have at any local public, given her interests and abilities and given our academic values.

I can't tell how much is here and now (compared to how and where I grew up) and how much is private school, but I think there were substantial downsides as well, especially in HS. There's a lot of unhealthy pressure and so many demands/enticements that I think the environment gives kids a really skewed sense of reality and gets in the way of personal/intellectual development. Under different leadership, that's a dynamic that might have been tempered if not reversed, but unfortunately I think it's full speed ahead for the foreseeable future.

Both public (husband went to public universities too). We started out in MCPS, knowing full well that some kids - especially boys - get lost in the system. That's what happened and we put our eldest in private. The private schools here are amazing and far more like the old public school of my 70s / 80s youth than MCPS, excepting the fact that the privates are much more racially and economically diverse than my old public, which is of course a very good thing.

07:34 -- I'm curious which school you chose, since you are an educator. Did you find in the end that the school delivered on its promises and your child was better than if he/she attended the local public?

Both us parents went to public, sending child to private.

Our child is a different person than we were, warranting different choices. It's pretty much as simple as that. Where parents went is irrelevant to the decision if it's made properly.

Both public and if we lived in any of the three states we (collectively) grew up in, I think we'd have sent our kid to public. But I taught at a good U in this area and was not at all impressed with the educations obtained by kids who did well even at FCPS or MoCo, so we looked at private, found a school that taught what we wanted DC to learn, and she has stayed there throughout. If I had to do it all over again, not sure I'd make the same choice. We chose what we thought was the best school available to/for our kid. It wasn't a categorical choice between public and private.

I went to public, DH to Catholic School. DH teaches in DCPS schools, and at first thought since we are in the suburbs public school would be a good choice (from his experience he said DCPS was not an option). I convinced him to tour a few private schools because I always wanted to send my kids to private based on my crappy public school experience. After our second tour he was sold (he witnessed small class sizes, innovative teaching and a love of learning he rarely experiences or witnesses in his own profession). So as long as we can affor it, we will be sending our kids to private schools.