Different kids are different. The best fit school for one student might not be best fit for a different student. Pick the school that is best fit for your DC.

It is nearly impossible to sort out to what degree good college placements reflect parents or grand-parents having hooks to particular colleges. This is just as true for a W high school - or Langley HS / McLean HS - as it is for a private school.

Our DC would not cope very well with large class sizes. We picked an (unheralded) private with smaller class sizes because that was the best fit for our DC. We do not think that choice will change college admissions odds for DC. We do think it will increase what he learns before college.

I was looking forward to our neighborhood school so our kids could have a group of friends to run around with. My spouse was more keen on private. Then I started hearing stories from parents of kids a year or two ahead of us. Regimented butts in seats, learning to count with an iPad app, teachers spending the majority of their time with the ESL population, minimal outdoor time.

Because my kid didn’t get into TJ. ☹️ Why aren’t there more schools like that around here?

For one dc, the public middle options were an overcrowded nightmare even with the great ratings. Well behaved, middle of the road kids get left behind. For my other dc, the are exceptionally bright. High achieving/high performing. DC got bored in early elementary and the public that had been great for our older dc couldn’t provide enrichment beyond games on an iPad.

We made the switch for 2 different reasons and both dc needed something different from school but we could find what we needed when looking at private. We switched in different grades too. Just depends on the kid.

I think the biggest advantage and one that parents make the sacrifice for is the environment. Being amongst peers whose parents care about education (there are many in public too but in our experience it was about half and half) has stretched our child. The kids aren't necessarily nicer, to be honest, but calmer yes, 100%. No one in our run of the mill K-8 Catholic is disrupting anyone's learning on a near constant basis, at least not without direct consequence. The expectation to behave is just there. And I say this as the parent of a child who given the wrong influences will definitely not behave. A striking difference was going to a music concert at the school. We were stunned by the silence in the room when others performed, as opposed to the chaotic winter concert we'd been to at the public where kids screamed and ran around the whole time. My kid often comments that they are being trusted to walk from one classroom to another on their own, whereas in the public school kids had to walk in a line accomoanied by the teacher and there was so much sushing, yelling, redirecting because kids would use the opportunity to go nuts during that time since it was clear there weren't many movement opportunities (recess, etc). While I don't think the academics go above and beyond public, it is definitely the first time a teacher is checking our child's spelling, the first time they're learning grammar and the first time the teacher reads books aloud to the kids in class. I think if public schools functioned in the same way mine did in the 80s, I'd be all for it. Sadly that's not what we found. The closest to that model is definitely the K-8 Catholic schools. At least from what I remember of my own schooling in a run of the mill public elementary / middle in the 80s and 90s.

my dc has been in DC public since pre-k, applied for private for 7th grade, got in, visited, didn't like it (top single sex school in area - only place they applied that year), declined the offer and stayed public. Now applying again for high school. this time DC knows what they want - peers who are laser focused and will push them to want to work hard, will engage in collaborative challenge, DC also wants smaller classes, more electives, rigorous academics, and a chance to really soar. Kid is an academic powerhouse, very self-motivated and knows what they want so this is all them. DH and I are reluctant as the parent population at the top private that DC prefers seem....intense. The competition DC seeks in these privates makes me nervous, as does the wealth. And the faux social justice/equity posturing. Especially after public!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m being encourage by family to consider private for my kid who is exceptionally bright and not very challenged at his public school. But I’m not sure privates will serve him any better, particularly as it will be a stretch to do private and we’d have to reduce how much extra stuff he gets to do outside of school. In any case it got me wondering why folks on this forum have chosen to do private and whether that reason has actually come to fruition as your kids have been in those schools…

Also, one of the best aspects of private school is the community and the deep friendships children form. Of course, any kid can make friends everywhere. But some of the public is so large, and kids don't form deep connections. This also goes with the relationship between the teacher and the kid. In a private school, the teacher knows the kids very well. The kid feels they are part of a community.

This is wildly inaccurate - neighborhood public schools support deep friendships that persist even as kids spread to other schools.

I agree with most posters here. After many years with kids in private-I think it really boils down to the PP comment that privates can kick people out and have better resources to handle behavioral issues. Is the education materially better? Maybe, maybe not. But the kids are on balance calm, peaceful, and not stressed out or on edge while learning. There are expectations for them that they must meet, like there will be in college and beyond. I send my kids as much for the environment as I do the education.

Academically and athletically, private school has better options than our local public. Plus, most students are college-bound.

My kid is a musical theater kid and we are getting mixed messages about public vs private and I'm still trying to figure it out. Seems like most people say they will have better options at public for musical theater than private. I have also been very skeptical about private since reading DCUM and hearing about all these horrific scandals and incidents at some of the top privates (a few are constantly in the "recent topics" which is where I started to see them). Honestly, I don't know what is better anymore. I guess it just depends on the situation but what I've learned is the grass is almost never greener on the other side.

Anonymous wrote:Went to private, was interested in private for older grades for kids (reason: small class size) but how can people afford it unless at least 1 parent high-powered lawyer/doctor/etc. or family helping? Are most people here getting family help?

We have no help or financial aid but we are Catholic and our kids are in Catholic school. We pay around $55k for one in high school and one in elementary. One lawyer and one in tech.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just a very different level of interest and engagement than we saw before. Loves reading now- that alone was worth the price of admission.

This sums it up well.

My kids have done both public and private, and I was old enough to remember switching between the two as an older kid. My main memory is how much more interesting the day-to-day felt at the private school.

In my public school, there was so much focus on routines, crowd control, repetition. It wasn't the teachers' fault – there were just too many kids, too many weird requirements from the district (just guessing on that one), etc. While I came out as a good test-taker, the daily experience felt monotonous (but also chaotic?), and this was in a pretty well-resourced area.

My not-that-fancy private school had all this room for variety and creativity. We got to be outside, go on trips, make things, and the curriculum was actually interesting. Not in the sense of being insanely accelerated; but like PP said, it make me curious again. And we weren't constantly getting yelled at for being loud, not staying in line, etc. (Which has been a stressor for my own kids, who tend to be rule followers.) Private wasn't perfect behaviorally either, but it was notably less stressful on a daily basis.

This is our experience as well. We are coming from a ‘W’ school district to a bare bones Catholic school (so not a fancy/rich school). But a world of difference. Everything you’ve said here is spot on.

Anonymous wrote:We switched my dc mid year. He is smart but not exceptionally so. He is above average and scored 96-99 percentile on map testing. He didn’t need private to increase grade level rigor. He just needed an academic environment that was teaching grade level material. He was bored and restless and teaching himself before. Now he’s in a small class that values academics and his teachers are able to challenge him where needed. This has been our experience switching from a desirable public elementary to a run of the mill catholic k-8

I could have written this myself. We also switched from a desirable public elementary to a run of the mill Catholic, and DS isn't a superstar and that's not why we moved him. Like your DS, just needed a place offering grade level education. He has bigger class sizes at the Catholic school (22 instead of 18), but disruptive behavior is not tolerated so they get a lot of work done.

Anonymous wrote:Private schools are different, not all offer the same academics. Some are able to do special classes for very bright kids even if the rest of the class isn't there. Some have a high achieving student body generally. And some can't really do advanced academics.

What I've found most valuable are the specials (music, art, theater) that have been largely gutted at public, and the writing instruction. Meaningful science, history, and language classes also start at younger grades than at public.

Our public offers Spanish every day and PE 4x/week, and have kept art and music once a week. We still ended up pulling DD out of public when we realized it was all screens all the time and she wasn't learning to write. We stayed until 3rd grade and they hadn't ever read a whole book as a class, just had the homework of "We recommend reading every night at home." She's in a parochial school now which is kind of a grind, more than I'd like maybe, but at least she can identify nouns and pronouns and use proper punctuation. Handwriting improved to the point where it's unrecognizable from 2nd to 4th grade. The classroom teacher even reads aloud to them every day from above grade level books, and they have silent reading time (out of books, not on an iPad). PE is only once a week, and so are Spanish and music.

Anonymous wrote:Went to private, was interested in private for older grades for kids (reason: small class size) but how can people afford it unless at least 1 parent high-powered lawyer/doctor/etc. or family helping? Are most people here getting family help?

In recent weeks there have been posts in this forum about families with 400k HHI getting financial aid and people admitting their net worth is 10 mil or more by the time they're in their early 40s. This area seems to have no shortage of wealthy families and financially savvy people who know his to work the system. For the rest of us? It's public school..