Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We send our kids to private because we do not think MCPS can provide the type of educational experience we want for our children. They started in MCPS, but we left after elementary. It’s a stretch for us but we believe it’s worth it—kids are being challenged, they are playing sports, there’s a school wide culture of service, there’s discipline, the calendar makes sense, communication is good, teachers are excellent, the school responds to parent issues, and socially DCs have made great friends. No regrets

LOL

I’m the PP you responded to with the LOL. Not sure what’s funny about me saying it’s a stretch for us to send kids to private but we are happy with the school so we make it work. We live in an old house with a tiny mortgage, drive old cars, and do not go on expensive trips. We have friends who have made the choice to send their kids to mcps and they spend big $ on their houses and trips and bar mitzvahs and camps and they are happy. People make different choices with how they spend their money based on their values/priorities/needs/personal experiences.

Anonymous wrote:We send our kids to private because we do not think MCPS can provide the type of educational experience we want for our children. They started in MCPS, but we left after elementary. It’s a stretch for us but we believe it’s worth it—kids are being challenged, they are playing sports, there’s a school wide culture of service, there’s discipline, the calendar makes sense, communication is good, teachers are excellent, the school responds to parent issues, and socially DCs have made great friends. No regrets

LOL

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My anecdote is many private school teachers are underpaid and so could not pay the high tuition at the schools where they teach if they were relying solely on their take-home pay. But many have high-earning spouses.

Many private schools waive tuition for the children of faculty.

That is simply not true. Look at employee benefits pages on school websites. Many offer just a 25 percent cut in tuition or no cut at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We applied and enrolled our DC in private off the bat. A good friend, a MCPS teacher with a kid in MCPS elementary, asked why I didn’t give public a chance first then switch out if I felt the same later.

Now that same MCPS teacher says she’s giving up on the public school system and enrolling her DC in private mid year.

The tide is changing.

Interesting because we did the opposite and we’ve been nothing but happy with MCPS. And I’m a private school educator planning to move to MCPS for the benefits. I think applications are probably up because of the boomer transition of wealth. I don’t think you can point to publics as the main reason, just look at their incredible college outcomes. Some schools are doing something right. Many privates great outcomes too. It’s certainly not as simple as public deteriorating when many are very pleased with their experience.

Glad you are happy, but at the moment there are two threads in the MCPS forum entitled “Is anyone happy with MCPS” and “Is MCPS Losing its Edge.” Each has hundreds responses that are largely critical of MCPS. Plus Bethesda Magazine wrote a long, in depth article about a year ago that outlined a lot of significant problems with MCPS. All of which suggests that a lot of people think that MCPS is deteriorating.

Didn’t read the article from last year but I’m sure they pointed to major issues with grading. I would not use random DCUM threads as your trusted source. OP is asking about private applications which can’t possibly be directly correlated to whatever the article said. Half these people live in DC or VA. The more likely answer is money.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We applied and enrolled our DC in private off the bat. A good friend, a MCPS teacher with a kid in MCPS elementary, asked why I didn’t give public a chance first then switch out if I felt the same later.

Now that same MCPS teacher says she’s giving up on the public school system and enrolling her DC in private mid year.

The tide is changing.

Interesting because we did the opposite and we’ve been nothing but happy with MCPS. And I’m a private school educator planning to move to MCPS for the benefits. I think applications are probably up because of the boomer transition of wealth. I don’t think you can point to publics as the main reason, just look at their incredible college outcomes. Some schools are doing something right. Many privates great outcomes too. It’s certainly not as simple as public deteriorating when many are very pleased with their experience.

Glad you are happy, but at the moment there are two threads in the MCPS forum entitled “Is anyone happy with MCPS” and “Is MCPS Losing its Edge.” Each has hundreds responses that are largely critical of MCPS. Plus Bethesda Magazine wrote a long, in depth article about a year ago that outlined a lot of significant problems with MCPS. All of which suggests that a lot of people think that MCPS is deteriorating.

Anonymous wrote:We applied and enrolled our DC in private off the bat. A good friend, a MCPS teacher with a kid in MCPS elementary, asked why I didn’t give public a chance first then switch out if I felt the same later.

Now that same MCPS teacher says she’s giving up on the public school system and enrolling her DC in private mid year.

The tide is changing.

Interesting because we did the opposite and we’ve been nothing but happy with MCPS. And I’m a private school educator planning to move to MCPS for the benefits. I think applications are probably up because of the boomer transition of wealth. I don’t think you can point to publics as the main reason, just look at their incredible college outcomes. Some schools are doing something right. Many privates great outcomes too. It’s certainly not as simple as public deteriorating when many are very pleased with their experience.

FOMO plays a huge role

Anonymous wrote:Private schools, like any organization, will have variance in quality of the workers (teachers, admins, coaches, etc), but there are always going to be very strong examples of each within a school.

That all but guarantees that your kid will have some significant relationships with really impactful adults outside your family.

Those benefits are hard to put a price on.

This of course happens in public too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Applications for admissions to most private schools in the DMV area area keep getting more competitive every year. One school we are applying to for 9th ( from our K-8) told us that applications have been up 70% this year.
I can understand why applications were up during the pandemic , but why are people still increasingly applying to privates five years later ?
Has the quality of education gone down at the public schools? Did people do well in the stock market over the past few years?
Just asking a genuine question.

Liberal obsession with DEI means academic rigor dumbing down public schools.

I think it’s more that the obsession with test prepping and its reliance on rote learning is increasingly seen as a barrier to developing modern cognitive skills.

Kids coming here for college from other countries are much better prepared than kids from US schools.

Americans are strange.

I don't understand the obsession with sports, particularly youth sports. But that's fine, I see how it teaches kids how to work hard for a goal, teaches them the benefits of hard work, and it provides more immediate feedback than other things.

But they don't seem to think that the principles of challenging environments and hard work apply to academics. As if god assigned everyone an academic index at birth and working to exceed that index is a form of cheating.

I understand the maternal instinct to shield your young children from competition, but even at young ages, shouldn't they be challenged academically? But in middle class families with fathers living in the home, why isn't there still so much reluctance to make your kids compete academically? Is it because the paternal instinct has been diverted to sports? Is it because you cannot participate in their academic successes as directly as you can their academic successes?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Applications for admissions to most private schools in the DMV area area keep getting more competitive every year. One school we are applying to for 9th ( from our K-8) told us that applications have been up 70% this year.
I can understand why applications were up during the pandemic , but why are people still increasingly applying to privates five years later ?
Has the quality of education gone down at the public schools? Did people do well in the stock market over the past few years?
Just asking a genuine question.

Liberal obsession with DEI means academic rigor dumbing down public schools.

This too will pass. Nothing goes straight up or straight down. The purging of DEI in education might be the one positive impact that trump has on this country.

Anonymous wrote:My anecdote is many private school teachers are underpaid and so could not pay the high tuition at the schools where they teach if they were relying solely on their take-home pay. But many have high-earning spouses.

Many private schools waive tuition for the children of faculty.