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Public vs. private schools
No, this is not a policy question. Rather Jenny, a loyal MR reader, asks for advice:
As an economist, I was wondering if you could provide any insights to us parents evaluating public versus private elementary schools for our kids...By comparison [with the good private school], my public school education seems shoddy. But at $21,000 for kindergarten and a younger sister that would be joining him, this is a huge financial commitment, and takes away our flexibility to do anything but grind away for the next 15 years. My son is bright and curious - how do I know that he will get that much of an incremental improvement being in private school? And despite my very non-inspiring, and at times dreadful, public education, I can't say that I'm any worse off for it today...I've been really struggling with how to evaluate this. Can economics shed any light?
I faced this same choice myself as a kid and I ended up telling my mother I was happy to remain in the public school. If nothing else I feared the commuting costs and not having friends' homes be nearby. Furthermore at public school I met Randall Kroszner and Daniel Klein, among other notables. Natasha and I faced this choice again with Yana and she ended up in public high school. I can't really cite economics here but if your public school is halfway decent that is the side I come down on.
Readers?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 5, 2008 at 03:45 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
I would guess that an extra $10,000 (time cost) of parental involvement would wipe out any difference. I'm sure you're going to be involved anyway, but surely you will have some extra time if you don't shoulder that financial burden. Put half of that into your kids, and it's really hard for me to believe that they won't be better off than they would have been in private school.
Personal experience - I went to public school for 1-7, but my mom gave me extra "home homework", encouraged me to read books, etc. I went to a private high school, and my brother went to public school. At least in my experience (though I did go to private school in India), public schools are better at letting you take advanced/college classes than private ones (mine had IB, but that was the limit).
Posted by: Omkar at Jun 5, 2008 3:53:14 AM
My view on it: go for criteria. A high school stundent will not learn as much as he is lectured, he will learn as much as he is asked to.
So in my point of view criteria is crucial, money for education should never be an issue.
Whichever has better criteria public or private, that should be your choose.
There are many public schools where lecturing is very good but students are not asked to know much so they end up knowing little.
Posted by: Tomislav Najdovski at Jun 5, 2008 4:32:16 AM
Tim Harford covered this question recently in 'More or Less' (a BBC Radio 4 programme). You can listen (I don't know if it's blocked outside the UK) to the programme here.
This is the description:
Can numbers tell you whether it matters what sort of school your child goes to?News reports have claimed that middle-class children suffer no academic disadvantage if they attend a struggling state school. But is that really true?
Actually, it is a very difficult question to answer.
One factor to consider is who your children go to school with. How important is that?
Or is it the quality of teaching that really counts?
Researchers in the United States have studied 120,000 children, who were randomly assigned classmates over a period of a decade.
Tim Harford finds out the results of the study from one of the world's leading experts on the statistics of peer effects, Professor Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University.
Posted by: Anon at Jun 5, 2008 4:43:09 AM
I agree with the post and the comments. The extra financial flexibility can be put to good use for example spending a bit more time with the kids and taking the kids travelling learning a lot more about for example history, culture and languages than I think they could ever learn in a private school classroom. And there are lots more great benefits of international travel. I do not have any direct or indirect experience with private education though.
Posted by: Morten at Jun 5, 2008 4:54:33 AM
Anecdotal evidence - a family friend's daughter was in a public school. The school called her up and said "Your daughter has a reading problem." Mum went "oh my god!" and hauled the kid out of school and off to a private school. Two years later the private school called her up and said "Your daughter has a reading problem."
Research on the educational achievement of private vs public schools does not on the whole provide evidence that private schools are better in developed countries once you control for the socio-economic conditions of the kids going there. http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/05/0411school.html. $20,000 is an awful lot to spend without much evidence of superior results.
The ability to get a kid out of a situation where they are being bullied strikes me as the big advantage of being able to go private. On the other hand, the kid is probably about equally as likely to be bullied in a private school as a public one.
I'd say go for private schooling and after-school if necessary. http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/ is a useful resource for after-schooling issues.
Posted by: Tracy W at Jun 5, 2008 5:06:03 AM
The loyal MR reader is asking about ELEMENTARY school, not high school. Also this question is highly detail and context dependent.
At the level of elementary school, I'd be suspicious how big the differences are (unless its an urban district and they're actually quite bad). The good private schools I'm aware of in the peninsula of Silicon Valley start at grade 6.
Beyond that, even though I'm a product of public school, I'd say go with the best you can afford. You can get a good education at a good public school, but you have to go out and get it. A good private school will somewhat force you to get a good education.
Posted by: Matthew Gunn at Jun 5, 2008 5:17:45 AM
Schools -- both public and private -- are pretty abusive environments, and you have no control over the types of kids your kid will be associating with there. Since peers have such a huge influence, that's pretty scary.
Homeschool.
Posted by: Jacqueline at Jun 5, 2008 5:23:54 AM
Just a general point, I'd be cautious about comparing like anecdote to like anecdote. California used to have some of the best public schools in the nation, now, using data from national standardized tests, they are near the worst. Today, EVEN among kids of college educated parents, average scores from Massachusetts public school kids (the best state) completely blow away the scores of kids from California public schools. My point is that the comparison of public vs. private school has vastly different meaning depending on when and where the comparison is/was made.
Posted by: mgunn at Jun 5, 2008 5:30:10 AM
The main difference in the UK seems to be class sizes and teacher workload... public (state) schools often have class sizes up to double that of private run schools. And the number of classes each teacher runs can be up to double. That has to make a difference to the education the pupils receive.
Posted by: Robert G at Jun 5, 2008 5:48:23 AM
I went to a private, religious school from K-12. I would say that while the education was better compared to my public alternatives (in upstate SC), the biggest advantages it conferred on me were those related to personal character.
Nonetheless, my school made it very difficult for me to apply to college because I didn’t have access to all those lovely standardized measures of worth (AP, IB, Honor Clubs) that public schools possess.
In short, I’d say go for public education. The advantages missed by choosing public education can usually be compensated for, but the advantages missed by choosing private education often cannot.
Posted by: Jeff H. at Jun 5, 2008 5:49:01 AM
As a bit of a counter to the # of AP classes at public schools, I went to a good public school, but they didn't have the calculus version of AP physics (BC), just the non-calc version (AB).
So near test time, I got excused to go to a local private school for a bit to sit in on the pre-test class-review and practice test.
On the flip side, a friend of mine at that same private school wanted to take the year long version of AP calc (BC), but it wasn't offered by his school. He didn't sit in on a class at my school (I don't know if he didn't ask, if he didn't want to, or if the school didn't allow him to), but we did exchange notes and prep together.
Short version: I don't think it can be generalized that public schools have more AP classes than private schools.
Posted by: Jody at Jun 5, 2008 6:44:43 AM
For that amount of money, wouldn't it be better to move to a better school district?
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Jun 5, 2008 7:20:46 AM
We moved 4 times while my daughter was in elementary school and chose private schooling 3 times. While academics were important to us, ultimately, I think that the decision was a social one for us. We liked the families that attended the schools, and the private schools made socializing easier in a new community. Academics standards are always a crap shoot, but I must admit that the private schools were able to fire incompetent teachers. It might be that private schools tend to provide a better safety net.
Posted by: Jim at Jun 5, 2008 7:23:20 AM
At $21000/year cost of private school, one also should consider the possibility of home schooling (with one parent staying at home). Even this is a huge financial commitment, though.
Posted by: Mikko at Jun 5, 2008 7:31:51 AM
I'd recommend Montessori school (www.montessori.edu) for elementary school-- forget whether it's public or private, it is how your kids are taught. Unlike traditional US education, Montessori education helps develop a well-rounded, self-directed child. I have been impressed with the maturity of children I've seen there.
I'm not a shill for the Montessori system, just a late 20-something hoping to save enough money to send my kids to a good school, and regretting the fact that we don't have a school voucher system.
Posted by: at Jun 5, 2008 7:39:19 AM
Jim hits the nail on the head with his comment about private schools being able to fire incompetent teachers. My children are in an affordable (60% of our public school cost per student) religious elementary school. While the school isn't always able to hire better teachers than the local public schools, bad teachers are fired quickly. Unfortunately, more expensive private schools often hire away some of the better teachers. While I don't think the academics are necessarily any better than the local public schools, the environment is more supportive and accepting of differences.
Posted by: subrosa at Jun 5, 2008 7:45:52 AM
I have to agree that the question is highly context-dependent. Many public school systems, even in suburban areas, are deeply flawed. Still, the best public school systems are better than many private schools.
If this is an issue of real concern, then I would STRONGLY recommend home schooling. The socialization of schooling--segregation by age, cliques, status hierarchies--is positively toxic. If you want to avoid some truly pernicious tendencies, school at home and enter the kid into many extracurricular activities, chosen with care.
Posted by: mp at Jun 5, 2008 7:48:56 AM
I agree with the first commenter -- parental involvement probably matters more. I went to private school K-12, but I learned more from my parents, and later from independent reading, than I ever did in the classroom.
On the other hand, it depends very much on the kid. If he has a learning disability, or is likely to be bullied, public school might just be too much misery. It depends on the private school, of course, but I'd guess that a kid is less likely to be shoved in a trashcan for being too bright or too different.
Posted by: sc at Jun 5, 2008 7:51:15 AM
I agree with many of the comments here: increase "investment" in the amount of time spent as a parent on academic assistance and guidance rather than investing in a private school financially.
Are there studies that look at school performance relative to parental assistance in academic/studying activities in the home? I imagine there are schools that do all of the "right things" but under-perform because of a lack of parental interest/involvement in their child's academic life.
Posted by: Vin at Jun 5, 2008 7:51:20 AM
$21,000/yr? I'd have to be pretty rich to think I could get value for that kind of money from kindergarten. And, as they say at the Yacht store, if you have to ask...
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 5, 2008 8:09:57 AM
Costs may be nearly prohibitive, and thus not worth it, but I am strongly (character-wise, but also intellectually) the product of many years of Montessori and Quaker private education, and I do think that the best incarnations of both of those approaches are fairly special. There may be financial aid available, you might be surprised--and the other thing I strongly believe is that actually elementary school is the place to sink the cash if you are only going to go private for part of the child's education. There tend to be magnet-type options for public middle and high school, but the kind of stuff (including, especially, dedicated and experienced teachers with extraordinary resources from the school) the best private elementary schools can do for kids is really something. Private for K-5 or 6 and then moving into the best part of the public school system is often a good compromise.
Posted by: Jenny at Jun 5, 2008 8:12:02 AM
My personal experience: mom offered me the choice to attend a private school as I entered high school; I didn't like the implicit elitism, and attended my local public high school instead.
On the first day of high school, I was offered the opportunity to buy marijuana and magic mushrooms in the bathroom. This was not an anomaly.
The following year we moved to Virginia, where I attended another public school. The highlight of that year was getting to see one of the bullies get his due when he was forcibly held down and urinated upon by a rival feral pack.
The year after that we moved overseas, and I attended a very fine private school (100% of my graduating class went on to college; straight 5s on the AP exams; that sort of thing). It was the best experience of my life. To this day, over twenty years later, I cherish that experience above all others in my life.
Just my personal experience. Your mileage may vary.
Posted by: Rich at Jun 5, 2008 8:13:17 AM
Btw, Tyler is right that it's not a policy question. I'm a huge advocate of separation of school and state. But it's not the parents', teachers' or kids' fault that the state subsidizes possibly inferior schools to the point that the personal finance decision is often a no-brainer.
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 5, 2008 8:15:54 AM
Just another anecdote, but here goes anyhow. My son went to a private elementary school. The main difference between it and the public school he would have gone to wasn't academic in the narrow sense, it had to do with things like art, music, and sports, which his school did much better (and, in the case of sports, much more democratically--everyone was on a team) than the public schools. On the down side, he was on the bus an hour every day. When he's in town, he still stops by the school to see his old teachers; I doubt that he'd be doing that if he'd gone to a public school.
Posted by: Alan Gunn at Jun 5, 2008 8:19:51 AM
Homeschooling or unschooling are the massively superior "none of the above" option here. Also, consider one of these schools as an intermediate between homeschooling and private school
http://www.sudval.org/07_othe_01.html
Finally, a few states do have a few public schools that are actually good. If you can get your kid into one, that might be best. Florida has several for elementary school kids and up, New York has three for high school, etc.
Posted by: michael vassar at Jun 5, 2008 8:30:40 AM
Is there not a moral case to be made against the public schools? My wife and I are of very modest income, but yet are committing to spending many thousands of dollars for private education of our children - at the expense of a great many other things. Regardless of the school quality, we refuse to patronize public institutions. Plus we are of the conviction that we are the most important influence on their development anyway.
Posted by: wintercow20 at Jun 5, 2008 8:40:48 AM
My daughter has been to both private and public schools. Last move was after 10th grade to our local public school (TC Williams in Alexandria, VA, "Home of the Titans").
Moving her depended, a lot, on having faith in her good judgment about activities, friends, behavior, etc., and the availability of classes and teachers and classmates that would challenge her.
In her first year at TC (11th grade) she had opportunities that never would have been available to her if she had stayed in private school. That's on top of her saving 1 hour each day in the car (1/2 hour each way), and the savings on tuition ($15k annually) and gas.
It depends on the child and the schools available, in addition to the parents' financial resources. My daughter, like Yana, had good options all around.
Posted by: chug at Jun 5, 2008 8:49:03 AM
You might also consider a charter school. They are public (i.e. free), but not run by the public school bureaucracy. The charter school my children are at has good points and bad points, but it has (nearly) the same peer selection effects as the local private school--parents who don't value education don't send their kids there.
Additionally, the lack of bureaucracy makes it easy for parents to play roles in the classroom (and the lack of money makes it imperative they do). Kids there see education as something their parents are committed to, not just a place they have to go for 7 hours a day. Personally, I agree with many previous commenters that these two factors--parental involvement and peer influence are more important than quality of instruction.
Posted by: George at Jun 5, 2008 9:01:53 AM
I'm confused wintercow20 - what is the moral argument against public schooling?
I came up via public school, though in Australia not the US. The only exception was my kinder year where I went to Motessori - though that definitely worked for me. It was also more of a melting pot than a private school would have been.
Posted by: Lothdyn at Jun 5, 2008 9:09:33 AM
At $21,000/yr, you're paying too much. If your local schools are really atrocious, you can move to someplace with a $1750/mo higher mortgage (actually, more, because mortgage interest is deductible), which will very likely have much higher quality public schools.
For a child who is not very good at self-directing his education, a private high school may confer that level of benefit, if it can get the child to study and learn more, get into a significantly better college, and provide networking opportunities later in life. But at the kindergarden or elementary level, paying much more than the religious schools charge (which is much less than $21k in most cases) is probably not worth the effort.
Posted by: Anthony at Jun 5, 2008 9:29:11 AM
The thing I find disagreeable is the notion of one's parents "assisting" with academic work. My parents "assisted" by talking like intelligent adults to each other and to us, by recommending reading, and so on. The idea that they'd have sat down with us to interfere with our homework is chilling. What an awful idea.
Posted by: dearieme at Jun 5, 2008 9:33:52 AM
First my background, My children are the fourth generation to attend the same elementary school. Small (345 children k4-6), Catholic, and private but in my grandfather's time it was the first public school in the city and run by nuns.
I live in GA, my city has a very competitive private school environment and some strong public schools but mostly weak middle & high schools. The drop out rate is high in the public schools. The private high schools are all focused on college prep. The private school facilities for the most part exceed all but the newest public school buildings.
The choice for those parents who can afford it or can get financial aid the choice is clear if you can't get into the three good elementary schools you go private. With private you have your choice of the two schools that excel academically or the two schools that excel in sports. From a parental perspective and discussions with parents chose public schools, you have the opportunity to influence your school at the private level. My wife has served on school board, helped select the next school principal, and has been extremely active at the school. Our tuition is less than $5,000 annually, a bargain for the environment and quality of teaching she is receiving. Compared to when I was there and the nuns were still in charge the number of additional enrichment opportunities (art, spanish, computer, music, chess club, lego league, etc) far exceeds anything I was exposed to as a child. This is solely due to market forces.
So my advice is do your cost benefit analysis of what is important to you, your children, and base your decision on the facts and what your gut tells you to do.
Posted by: Jim at Jun 5, 2008 9:43:59 AM
Einstein opposed compulsory schooling. Student motivation is critical. Conventional schools kill student motivation. Compulsory, unpaid labor is slavery, black or white, male or female, young or old. Schools give to many children no reason to do what schools require. Gandhi opposed compulsory schooling.
It does not take 12 years at $10,000 per student year to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job. State (government, generally) provision of civics instruction is an much a threat to demotacy as State operation of newspapers would be (is, in totalitarian States).
I second Jacqueline's recommendation, with a twist; after age 6 or so, find five other families in your situation and hire someone to provide daycare to age 18. You'd be looking for a neighbor's daughter with a recent B.S. in Biology, Econ., or Physics (science majors can teach History and literature, but History and English majors cannot teach Algebra).
Second best option: parochial school.
Posted by: Malcolm Kirkpatrick at Jun 5, 2008 10:04:42 AM
I think that though few like to admit it that study shows that schools do not matter nearly as much as we today like to believe. You could would send the child to school that teaches him more of the things that you think he can use in his life but you are unlikely to get much satisfaction there but no way would I spend 20k/year.
Another alternative is send to the school where you think he will get the best grades and then hire very good tutors to prepare him for the SAT and teach him things that you want him to know. IMO schooling has gotten Looney so try to beat the system even while educating the child on what will help him in life. You can hire very good tutors cheap if you take time to screen them well.
BTW IMO home schooling is great if you are willing and able.
Posted by: Floccina at Jun 5, 2008 10:05:24 AM
I think it's important for gifted children to enter school systems with other gifted children. Growing up in an academic community allows for a greater number of positive externalities. This is why MBAs and graduate students try to enter better programs.
Posted by: Todd at Jun 5, 2008 10:50:14 AM
Depending on your commute and such, a cheaper solution may be to simply move near some good public schools. I went to public elementary and middle schools that were within walking distance of my house, and I turned out okay. :-)
Posted by: mravery at Jun 5, 2008 10:50:27 AM
I went to public elementary school, private middle and high school. My sister stayed public for her secondary schooling.
My education was exemplary, while hers was more than lacking. Though clearly this is anecdotal, she would often regale us with tales of her teachers popping up in videos completely unrelated to the subject material at hand: for instance, in her economics class they watched ALL of Planet Earth.
While I'm jealous that she got to watch Planet Earth, I'm not jealous that her education was inferior to mine. That being said, I was lucky enough to go to a very good private school. Like public schools, private schools aren't created equal either, but I suppose that at a cost of $21,000 a year the school being considered isn't an absolute joke.
Posted by: Andy at Jun 5, 2008 10:57:02 AM
Thanks to a trust fund, I was able to attend the wonderful Latin School of Chicago (www.latinschool.org). The biggest differences I noticed from my K-8 public schooling were: the caliber of my fellow students, the lack of bullying/gangs, the smaller classrooms, and the extra effort put into preventing students from "falling through the net," so to speak. Even at 31, I still cherish my experiene there as one where love of learning was valued. All students were expected to matriculate at competitive colleges, and everyone in my graduating class did.
With that all said, I probably would have done just as well at one of Chicago's public magnet schools. If the child is natively intelligent, curious and hard-working, the environment won't make so much of a difference so long as it is not actively hostile to his efforts and interests either institutionally or socially. If I had kids, I don't think a place like Latin would be worth the $23,000 they now charge for high school.
Posted by: Kevin B. O'Reilly at Jun 5, 2008 10:57:08 AM
My advice: The value of school choice almost entirely depends on the friends that a kid will make. If you live near a good public school the network your kid will be brought into may even be better than a rich private school. For instance, in the LA area, the private schools (even as early as middle school) are marred by the gross number of kids that do cocaine. Find a public school with a good magnet/advanced ed program (if you think your kid would do well to be in one of those programs) if you're worried about the cost.
I think one of the economic issues here is that to 'get in' to a public school, you need to live near it, and so the good public schools - e.g. Mission San Jose, Gunn, Lynbrook, Monta Vista, etc. in the Bay Area - are in areas with ridiculously high property values. So, in effect you pay 'tuition' via buying/renting your house for an elevated price. On the other hand, for a private school you can live in a cheaper neighborhood and commute, but you pay tuition. If you see your house as an asset, it is probably a better long-term decision to move near a public school since the 'tuition' you pay may appreciate in your favor - whereas in the case of the private school, it is lost.
Posted by: Andrew G at Jun 5, 2008 11:32:25 AM
For what it's worth, in the area where I grew up, the private schools had infinitely more drug problems than the public schools (which had their own drug problems). I had a few friends at one local private school who attested to the teachers smoking up with the students on a regular basis. This was as recently as five years ago. And though that's an extreme, all of the local private schools had a reputation for far more drugs and promiscuity than the public schools.
...not that these are relevant concerns at the elementary level, but moving forward, they will be.
Posted by: Rock On at Jun 5, 2008 11:35:45 AM
The thing I find disagreeable is the notion of one's parents "assisting" with academic work. My parents "assisted" by talking like intelligent adults to each other and to us, by recommending reading, and so on. The idea that they'd have sat down with us to interfere with our homework is chilling. What an awful idea.
Why? Plenty of people have been taught by their parents down through the centuries. Why do you think that parents inteferring with homework is chilling and awful?
Parents doing homework for their kids is not a good idea, barring extreme circumstances. But if you have a school that's a bit shoddy about teaching, interferring with your kids' homework in the sense of making sure your kids thoroughly learn the basics and/or extending their horizons makes sense to me.
Posted by: Tracy W at Jun 5, 2008 11:48:29 AM
As someone who just finished five years of teaching in a private school, I will say confidently: it depends.
There are so, so many factors at play besides public vs. private. There are excellent and terrible schools in both categories. It really has to come down to what your child's strengths and weaknesses are, and those of the schools in question.
I think with private schools, the main thing you're buying is a peer group. This has advantages (they will generally be from families that care about education, meaning teachers have to spend less time on behavioral problems and can spend more time on high academic standards). It has disadvantages (they are likely to be geographically scattered and may leave your kid with a very skewed understanding of wealth and class). You're also likely to be getting smaller classes (which means more attention to your kid's needs, and more likelihood the school will run a class that only your kid and a handful of others need, but also may mean that your kid comes to expect a lot of handholding). And you're likely to be getting much more access to sports (in public schools you tend to only participate in sports if you're good enough to make a team, whereas many private schools require sports for everyone and have teams to accomodate this -- as a sedentary nerd I thought this was a liability before I started teaching, but now I have deep respect for the practice on many levels).
Personally, I and my husband had good experiences in private schools and bad experiences in public schools (due, in both cases, to our being intellectually oriented and advanced). I have an emotional reaction against public schools which is hard for me to overcome because of that. However, for my daughter, I will research both public and private options -- I would love to not have to pay additional money (beyond the costs of buying into my town) to educate her, and I like the racial and economic diversity in our local public schools -- but academic standards are the sine qua non, so we'll see.
Posted by: Andromeda at Jun 5, 2008 11:49:09 AM
By the way, financial aid guidelines are much more flexible than people realize; although individual schools do not have to follow National Association of Independent Schools guidelines for financial aid, many do, which means that families making up to almost $200K are, under some circumstances, eligible for aid. In addition, many private schools would *love* to have more middle-income families; they can attract the wealthy easily enough, and they have a smattering of very poor kids through various philanthropic programs, but in between they have...the teachers' kids? They'd love to be more balanced. So don't rule out anything on financial grounds if you haven't applied and seen your aid package. As with college, the sticker price is not necessarily what you pay.
Posted by: Andromeda at Jun 5, 2008 11:54:47 AM
It's just one data point, but I found the private school that I attended (grades 6-12) to be very flexible and helpful when I wanted to learn more than was minimally required of me there (which was itself more than the local public school required).
I suspect (but don't actually know) that it would have been harder to do the same things at the much larger and presumably more bureaucratic local public school.
Posted by: Telnar at Jun 5, 2008 11:57:15 AM
My advice comes from my own experience: Send the child to public school and see how it goes. If, after a few years, it seems like he is doing well in school and scoring well on standardized tests, and the environment seems safe, then leave him in the system. If not, pull him out and send him to private school.
I was in public school from kindergarten through 3rd grade. I scored very highly on all the standardized tests, but did not receive good grades because, at the time, I was disinterested and a bit of a discipline problem. This prompted my parents to send me to private school where I had a smaller class size. By the time I was choosing a high school, my parents left it up to me to decide between private and public. I visited several schools, and in the end decided to go private. My high school was a very good one, and I think I received unique learning opportunities and met some very intelligent people, both among my classmates and faculty. However, my friends who went to the public school near by did very well in getting into colleges as well, so it's hard for me to claim that I did any better by choosing the private high school.
Posted by: Dave at Jun 5, 2008 11:59:33 AM
We started off with private schools for our son, including the Pleasant But Limited Elementary, the Vague Hippie Middle, and the Erratic Nazi Middle. We then put him in public HS (which happened to be one of the two best public schools in Virginia Beach) and both parents and child were much happier.
I doubt school had much to do with his intelligence and ability, though. We read to him early and often; and we did not have a TV at all until he was six, and from then to now it's only usable for video / DVD / Xbox. I suspect that those factors were more important.
The school's contribution was mainly, as far as I can tell, having someone other than Mom and Dad be interested in his success and telling him that it was important to learn this stuff.
Some of the public school people did this very well (some, notably the maths teacher, did not).
I can only think of one private school teacher who did this well.
YMMV.
Posted by: Virginian at Jun 5, 2008 12:00:22 PM
I should also add that, even though I'm not sure my private high school made me better off for college admissions, I did often feel that I was in a more challenging environment than my friends in public school. But private schools can vary greatly in this regard.
Posted by: Dave at Jun 5, 2008 12:01:18 PM
My daughter graduates today from Design and Architecture Senior High in Miami. It has been consistently rated one of the best public high schools in the country. Just a brag a little, my daughter will graduate 16th in her class and is off the San Francisco Art Institute in the fall. The key to public schools are the Gifted Programs and Magnet Schools. While I think the level of innovation would be much greater in a system with more competition (vouchers or some other system), there are innovative schools in the public system. The key is to find a school that is allowed to innovate, something that is hard but not impossible. We got our daughter in the gifted program in elemenatary school but it wasn't easy. Teachers are reluctant to let gifted students out of the regular classroom because it leaves them with the average and below average students which makes their performance as teachers look worse. You have to push to get your child into the program.
I recently thanked the principal at my daughter's school for saving me 4 years of private school tuition. We were very happy with the public school education but that is only because we were involved and pushed to get our child the best education the public system could offer.
Posted by: Joe Calhoun at Jun 5, 2008 12:11:34 PM
I think people overestimate the impact of schools in general. Really the two most importance factors for a successful student are:
1. Have rich parents.
2. Be very intelligent.
If you adjust for those two factors then I suspect there is minimal difference between various schools. On the other hand, private schools are great at selecting for people with #1, and any schools with admissions criteria (public or private) do an ok job at selecting for #2.
Posted by: Andy at Jun 5, 2008 12:28:42 PM
It depends on the kid. Some are go-getters, and these kids will do well no matter where they are. These are the kids in the top 5% of their class. You might as well save your money for higher education, and send them to public school.
Those who are bright, but more susceptible to peer pressure will tend to rise or fall to the level of those around them. These kids are generally in the top 20% in aptitude, but may range from the middle of the class on up in class rank. The marginal benefit of private schooling is highest here.
Posted by: Charlie at Jun 5, 2008 12:30:20 PM
It is true that private schools can get rid of the bad teachers, but a potentially important benefit is that they can get rid of the bad students too. One major problem in the public school I went to was the large number of students who had no interest whatsoever in actually learning anything. It would have been a Pareto improvement for the student body if the uninterested students got expelled. Obviously, this would conflict with the voting public's "No Child Left Behind" sensibilities. Also, their parents might have held some forlorn hope of their children getting an education, but the free daycare function of public schools seems often overlooked.
Does anyone read comments this far down?
Posted by: Alex J. at Jun 5, 2008 12:36:09 PM
Good public schools are good for most kids. They tend to have more money, although lots of it go for expenses that have nothing to do with your kids education (compliance, no child left behind, administration, etc.).
If both parents work at highly compensated professional jobs and money is not an issue, privates can save a lot of time. The privates can bundle the basic education with all the extra curricular activities that are at least a 1/2 time job. Sports, music lessons, etc. They will also give a level of service that isn't available at public schools. One of their target markets is children of female physicians.
For the upper middle class, the cost of private schools is a huge burden. That is why people move to areas that provide good public schools.
You can only do so much for your children. You can't protect them from the world forever.
Posted by: ziggurat at Jun 5, 2008 12:50:05 PM
"Buying a peer group," as someone put it, is a two-way street. When my son was at a private school, his peer group was very difficult to deal with: cliquish, impulse-challenged, and entitled. (This was a parent-participation school, which means I say what I do after having spent many mornings with them.)
His experience in a public charter school (also using a parent participation model) has mostly been a lot better.
I highly recommend parent participation for some of its many advantages:
- The student body self-selects for parents who have a level of commitment to education;
- The parent's visible involvement send a powerful message about that commitment;
- The presence of the extra adults effectively lowers the student-teacher ratio to a level that other types of schools can't match;
- Parents have real relationships with the child's teacher and peer group.
As for test scores: before you base any decisions on them, I strongly urge you to read _Measuring_Up_ by Daniel Koretz.
Posted by: Rich at Jun 5, 2008 12:50:11 PM
We faced the same decision for my son and went for the private school, but only because we got enough financial aid to make it affordable (barely). Our choice was a little easier because the local school is not that great and my son is ahead on a lot of the skills they teach in kindergarten. We did not want him to be bored learning the alphabet when he can already read. With the small class size in the private school we hope they will be able to keep him moving forward and keep him challenged.
There are other factors to consider. At many private schools there are common entry points. If the school has kindergarten, usually all of those slots are for new students. In first or second grade the they only have spaces that are open because students left the school. This means it may be harder to get them into private school in first grade. Also, many public school gifted programs don't start until third grade. This means you could use private school for k-2 and then use the gifted program in public school in third grade.
Posted by: Anon at Jun 5, 2008 12:52:05 PM
I would say that it really depends on your local public schools. I attended an excellent public high school in suburban North Jersey (not magnet, not charter, in fact the only high school in my school district). The classes were small (my graduating class was around 170 students), the teachers excellent, resources ample and over 95% of the graduating students would go on to attend a four-year college. From what I've read, most of the benefits coming from private school attendance appear to be largely from self-selection, mainly that the private schools are filled largely with the children of the kind of people who would send their kids to private school. Also, private schools benefit from the fact that they can easily remove discipline problems and that they don't even have to admit the real meatheads in the first place.
Posted by: sbard at Jun 5, 2008 12:55:18 PM
Living in Kansas City we have very few options when it comes to public schools. Luckily we have a French charter school in our neighborhood that should work great for our youngest. As for our daughter we opted for private school (6th grade and up). I can attest to the fact that financial aid is indeed available for students of "middle-class" families. It is actually less expensive than the parochial schools. What a deal!
Posted by: Frank at Jun 5, 2008 12:55:24 PM
Is it worth the money? You need to know what you're getting. If the private school is going to teach your kid using the same methods as the public school and you don't value the peer group at the school (the other kids for your kid and the other parents for you) it doesn't seem to me that it would be worth the extra money.
In our case, we chose to send our daughter to private school (K-8) because we love the philosophy (progressive education and no homework v. lots of homework and teaching towards No Child Left Behind) and we love the community. The school, teachers and community are tremendously different than the alternatives. But there are many other private schools around that would be better than the public ones, but probably not enough to justify the additional cost.
Posted by: Kevin Postlewaite at Jun 5, 2008 1:02:25 PM
Thanks to everyone for their comments. We're still trying to figure this out, and it's helpful to get more ideas and input. We have considered moving, but higher property taxes plus long commutes don't make this attractive. (We're in CA. Prop 13 creates huge disincentives to moving.) We applied to parochial school and were not admitted. Homeschooling would be far more expensive than private school. So the question we are pondering is how do you decide a public school is "good enough"? We are an urban district that assigns schools on a lottery basis, so we have some choice in the matter, although the very good ones are almost impossible to get in to. For those of you who did public schools that weren't among the famous good ones, how did you determine if it's good enough?
Posted by: Jenny at Jun 5, 2008 1:15:47 PM
It seems like many on this thread are over-estimating the effect that parents have on their children, and under-estimating the effect that a child's peer group has on the child (see Judith Harris' "The Nurture Assumption"). If you live in a wealthy neighborhood, who are the children who go to the public school? Probably the less talented and the kids who come from families that don't emphasize education and/or achievement. If you live in a middle-class or worse neighborhood, you really have to worry about your child's peer group.
Also, as someone mentioned, you are likely to make friends with the parents of your child's classmates. Would you rather befriend successful, wealthy people who can likely do favors for you later, or the less successful parents at the public school? Of course, the best private schools are quite expensive, prohibitively so for most, but as mentioned, financial aid does exist. Also, you can choose to live in a less expensive neighborhood if you send your children to private schools, recouping some of the cost.
(ps, I saw that someone suggested one's house is an "asset" and argued that one should buy as much house as they can afford and send the kids to the local public school. Haven't recent events dampened the "house as asset" craziness a little in this country? It is great if it turns out to be an asset, but so long as you have to live in it, calling it an asset is a stretch).
Posted by: GU at Jun 5, 2008 1:26:16 PM
On the social science side of things, I'd say the evidence suggests that above a threshold of quality, it really doesn't matter where you go to school. As Jim Coleman said, "it's all family."
On gut instinct, my experience is that most kids will be fine - as you note, you have friends and there's a lot of stuff to do.
Posted by: Fabio Rojas at Jun 5, 2008 1:41:55 PM
Jenny: the "good enough" problem is one that fills me with paranoia, too. I know the school I teach at is good enough because...I taught there for five years. I also know many things about it I would never learn from web sites or visits or talking with people, and that scares me -- I'll be sending my daughter someday to a school I have not researched this thoroughly, and there will be important things I don't know.
That said, I think the visit is crucial. I plan to look at test scores, but only to make sure they're not abject -- once they're minimally acceptable I think other things matter more, and moreover I don't think test scores address the value added problem without a lot more data than I'm likely to have. Here are things I'd be looking for on a visit...
Are kids in the classroom happy and engaged?
How do adults treat kids, and each other? And how do kids treat adults, and each other?
What sort of vibe do I get? (I am looking for "academically serious yet personally warm".)
How open are the people you talk to to your concerns, whatever they may be? When you talk about your kid, are they excited about kids? When you talk about your kid's needs, do they react like they've had experience dealing with things like that? (Note that admins in achievement-oriented areas, public and private, are used to dealing with psychotic parents who think their kids are geniuses regardless of the evidence, and if you come across as one of these you may get a brushoff...this is tricky if your kid actually *is* a genius...so be aware of your self-presentation here. You want to be involved, but aware of your kid's strengths and weaknesses. And, you know, not crazy.)
On the web site, I look for test scores for public schools (privates may not test and are not required to disclose, so you won't find them). I look for math and language curricula for middle and high schools (not because there's anything special about those, but because as a Latin teacher I can gauge the rigor of Latin programs easily, and because math is fairly standardized so it's easy to see how ambitious the school is -- how early do they teach algebra I?). For elementary schools, it's harder, because the curricula are fuzzier (lots of the important things being taught are social skills and processes and skills, not content), but if there's an associated school with upper grades, I assume the elementary school is aiming to prepare its students for use those upper grades' curricula. (So, eg, in a private K-8 or K-12 school, use the middle & upper schools to determine the rigor of the lower school; in public schools, use the district's middle and high schools to estimate the ambition of the elementary schools. Not a great assumption as curricula can be startlingly unaligned, but it's what I've got.) Anyway, in your case, look at whatever subjects you value most and/or know the most about and see how their offerings and expectations strike you.
It's a tough question to answer, though, because "good enough" is so based in your values, so the answer is different for different people. So really, I'd start with examining your values closely. What are you looking for in terms of curriculum (pace, degree of tracking, progressive vs. traditional vs. radical structures, class sizes, flexibility in progressing through the curriculum, elective/art/music/language/etc. offerings)? What are you looking for in terms of school culture (traditional<-->progressive, orderly<-->creative, etc.)? What are you looking for in terms of peer group (racial/economic/cultural/intellectual diversity, safety concerns)? What do you want in terms of extracurricular opportunities (sports, drama, clubs, etc.)? And, if you're up against the wall, which of these values will you sacrifice for which others?
Posted by: Andromeda at Jun 5, 2008 2:04:10 PM
I'd say take that $21,000 a year and invest it and put the child in public school. After 13 years you'd have well over $300,000 to give your child. Think about, would you rather have nominally better schooling, or $380,000 when you turned 18?
Posted by: Robert S. Porter at Jun 5, 2008 2:12:19 PM
I am only a casual reader of MR so I don't know if this will get me flamed. But here goes. A fair amount of the book Freakonomics deals with this question. As I recall their big take away is that Parents who are involved in their childrens education matterd more than the quality of the school.
Posted by: Tyler at Jun 5, 2008 2:31:16 PM
It depends on where you live. Here in Los Angeles, the high school dropout rate for LAUSD, the country's second biggest public school district, is over 55%. No more than 10% of students who enter 9th grade will score over 1000 on the SAT (Math + Verbal, not counting Writing). If you took the SAT before scoring was made easier in 1995, that's the equivalent of an 890. Marginal Revolution readers will not want their kids in classrooms with the average LAUSD student.
Still, there are pockets of quality here and there in the system, such as a highly gifted magnet that requires a 145 IQ on the Wechsler IQ test to get into.
On the on the other hand, if you live in beautiful San Marino, the olde money suburb south of Pasadena, the average SAT score at the public high school is 1231.
For more details on SAT scores by every LA County high school, see:
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/070128_scores.htm
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 5, 2008 2:35:27 PM
The best option is balance the economics of moving and going private. Classes that move at an appropriate pace for your child are important him or her being able to enjoy school, learning etc. I'd chose the school that assigns less homework, that gives you more time in the evening to teach your child what you know.
Posted by: matt m at Jun 5, 2008 4:26:51 PM
Within public school systems, there are myriad options, but it's not easy to find out about them. For example, the magnet school system in Los Angeles is run on a lottery basis, _but_ the system for accumulating points to get a leg up in the lottery for the most desirable magnet schools is so complex that mostly the smartest and most driven parents manage to master it. This keeps out the riff-raff.
The Los Angeles Times employs Sandra Tsing Loh to write the "Magnet Yenta" blog to answer the questions of lawyers and screenwriters about how to get their precious offspring into the mostly white/Asian magnet schools for free so they don't have to drop $26k per year to send their kid to Campbell Hall to keep them away from the typical LAUSD student bodies.
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070121_magnet.htm
The bottom line is that practically everybody who is anybody in American behaves when it comes to their own kids based on assumptions that would get them Watsoned out of polite society if they spelled them out in public discourse.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 5, 2008 4:38:52 PM
That parents would like their children to go to well-managed schools with good teachers and good students is somehow unspeakable? I didn't know that!
Posted by: Will Wilkinson at Jun 5, 2008 4:47:18 PM
Yet it seems quite opposite to the ballyhooing in the media about the neo-segregation of schools, and the generally expressed belief of equality of public education...
Posted by: Billare at Jun 5, 2008 5:33:03 PM
As The Atlantic Monthly's Sandra Tsing Loh writes on her own website, at the hilltop "independent" school where her Prius-driving screenwriter friend who couldn't get his kids into a magnet spends $38,000 annually to educate his six-year-old twins, they "honor diversity among the foliage". And yet…
"To judge by the student population there, L.A. 'diversity' looks like 14 white kids and Savion Glover. 10 white kids and 5 brown kids is 'urban,' 5 white kids and 10 brown kids looks, well, not safe."
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 5, 2008 5:48:27 PM
By the way, we now have the definitive cross-generational study Mexican-American educational assimilation, by UCLA sociologists Vilma Ortiz and Edward E. Telles of the Chicano Studies Research Center. In 2000, they tracked first to third generation respondents to a famous 1965 study of Mexican Americans in LA and San Antonio, then interviewed their children and asked about grandchildren, getting data all the way out to the fifth generation.
To keep things simple in my summary of their findings in the 2008 book "Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race," I'll ignore the original respondents and just report on these 700 Baby Boomer children of the old respondents (or, in one case, the Baby Boomer children's Generation X children).
Their multiple regression analyses show that the key factor, driving all the others, is education. They conclude:
"Throughout this book, our statistical models have shown that the low education levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of assimilation, thus reinforcing a range of ethnic boundaries between them and white Americans."
As is well known, American-born Mexicans average more years of education than do their Mexican-born immigrant ancestors. Unfortunately, as Telles and Ortiz report, the third and fourth generations of Mexican Americans do not continue to close the gap relative to non-Hispanic whites:
"In education, which best determines life chances in the United States, assimilation is interrupted by the second generation and stagnates thereafter."
The fourth generation (whose grandparents were born in America) was particularly unaccomplished:
"Sadly and directly in contradistinction to assimilation theory, the fourth generation differs the most from whites, with a college completion rate of only 6 percent [compared to 35 percent for whites of that era]."
The fourth generation Baby Boomers averaged 0.7 years less schooling than the second and third generation Mexican Americans born in the same era.
Telles and Ortiz found:
"...the educational progress of Mexican Americans does not improve over the generations. At best, given the statistical margin of error, our data show no improvement in education over the generations-since-immigration and in some cases even suggest a decline."
In 2000, the UCLA interviewers also asked the Baby Boomer children of the original subjects about their own children (i.e., the grandchildren of the 1965 respondents). These grandchildren (who are third to fifth generation Mexican Americans, Generation X-ers born in the 1960s and 1970s) "seemed to be doing no better than their parents" at graduating from high school.
Their book is a monument to disinterested, objective social science.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 5, 2008 5:56:39 PM
The Chicano Studies Research Center sociologists did find some good news on education. The 12 percent of the 700 Baby Boomers in their sample who started high school in Catholic or other private schools averaged 1.7 more years of schooling than the public school kids. Even after adjusting statistically for their higher average parental status, the Catholic school kids averaged an extra year of education.
Unfortunately, Hispanics don't seem to be making much of an effort to enroll their children in Catholic schools. Although Latinos now make up 24 percent of preschoolers (up sharply from 19 percent in 2000), Catholic school enrollment is dropping. USA Today reported recently:
"As Pope Benedict XVI prepares to visit the USA next week, a report released today by a Washington education think tank finds that more than 1,300 Catholic schools, most of them in big cities, have closed since 1990. … Overall, Catholic school enrollment now stands at about 2.3 million, down from the peak of 5.2 million in the early 1960s."[Catholic School Enrollment Dwindling by Greg Toppo]
For more detail on the important book "Generations of Exclusion," see
http://vdare.com/sailer/080601_barone.htm
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 5, 2008 5:59:15 PM
David Friedman advocates unschooling.
Posted by: TGGP at Jun 5, 2008 6:00:48 PM
There are plenty of public schools that your children can attend and get a good education. If you don't like your local public school, check to see if there is a charter school in your area that you can apply to, or if your school district has a magnet school program.
Posted by: RZ at Jun 5, 2008 6:05:55 PM
This is all anecdotal, but here are my impressions. I'm a junior at any Ivy and I edit submissions for a school publication. I went to a hyper-competitive private high school.
The main advantage of a good private school (in my view) is that they tend to turn out better writers. There are some public school programs with excellent writing programs, but they are (IMHO) harder to find. Even (especially?) at the top level, most of the public school graduates I've encountered are at a substantial disadvantage.
If you want your son/daughter to go to a great college, you might be better off sending them to a non-magnet, ordinary public high school where he/she might face less competition and a more relaxed workload. If you aren't status-obsessed and just
want your kid to be happy, this might also be the better option.
In retrospect, I often wish I had chosen the second route.
Posted by: Eustice at Jun 5, 2008 6:22:39 PM
I've taught high school for five years (four public, one private international) and been a teacher educator for fifteen years. Based upon personal experience, extensive reading, and numerous school visits, I believe the "you get what you pay for" assumption is wrong in this case of private schooling. We sent our daughters to a public elementary that was outstanding not because it was an all-star faculty, but because of exceptional family involvement. Then, following our daughters' desires, we sent them to a private middle school. Now, they attend the public high school. The private, "academically talented" (I think the school's sign should read "financially talented") experience was great because less time was wasted with classroom management challenges. Most importantly though, their peers cared about doing well in school. Tough to put a price on late night phone calls about projects they're deeply engaged in. To me, the opportunity cost of attending a private school is not less purchasing power, but a relative lack of exposure to cultural/academic diversity. I wish the eventual return to a public high school compensated for that, but given tracking, it doesn't. Since our daughters will mostly be in Advanced Placement classes, in effect, they attend a school-within-a-school, one that's much more homogeneous than the school more generally. Lastly, students are in school for six hours times 180 days which represents about 22-23% of the time they are awake during the year. As a result, parents spend too little time thinking about the effects of the societal curriculum. . . television programming, extracurricular activities, family activities, etc.
Posted by: Ron Byrnes at Jun 5, 2008 6:27:51 PM
Education is like any other commodity. Different grades come at different prices. However, there are qualitative factors to consider. The most important is critical thinking. Will he/she learn enough to survive, or will they be able to problem solve and move on to creative thinking? What are the opportunities for real intellectual development versus learning the basics.
At the primary level, most kids are pretty much the same although the marketing techniques of educators convince the parents that their kids are "special" and need their very expensive teaching methods.
Also, you have to compare schools. If you live in a large city, you probably want to go to a private school because the public schools are controlled by the bureaucrats, union bosses and patronage workers. The teachers there aren't interested in teaching, they are just there to collect a paycheck. They have their jobs because they are related to other city and union workers.
You really have to ask yourselves How did the human race survive the last several million years without the public schools? They are not indispensable.
Also, you have to consider the political propaganda that your children are likely to receive at public schools. At my son's public school, environmentalism is a mantra. There is no disagreeing with AL Gore. He is God. I have had to unlearn him of his errant ways. Of course, they are always telling kids to tell their parents to vote for tax increases to "save" band and art, even though the only thing they care about at the school is the football team. We have to start school in the middle of August so the football team can start practicing.
The administrators at the public schools don't give a damn about the kids or the parents. They are arrogant, ignorant sloths who are bleeding the taxpayers dry. The taxpayers are chumps, they are sheep to be sheared.
On the other hand, some public districts are very well administered and seem to provide a decent education at a reasonable price. Of course, those are usually where the Republicans live.
Don't get me started on pre-school. Pre-school is a yuppie fetish. At most, baby sitting service. We have have a good pre-school program in my area. The best part is, the people who want it pay for it.
Posted by: jorod at Jun 5, 2008 9:18:36 PM
PS And I have to say my two public high school boys are straight A students and are 3 sport athletes.
I went to private schools all my life. This has been an experience. When I was in grammar school, we had 8 grades, two administrators and a janitor. 40-50 kids in a room. How did we ever learn anything? Of course, we had discipline. Our parents would beat the hell out of us if we didn't behave.
Posted by: jorod at Jun 5, 2008 9:49:47 PM
The reasons for sending kids to private schools are at least three fold: 1) superior academic experience; 2) enculturation/networking effects; and 3) status-seeking/conspicuous consumption by parents.
Most of the discussion has focused on 1), which I agree is real but small. I would add that private schools offer superior extracurricular opportunities and do a much better job of celebrating students’ successes. Regarding 2), a previous commenter (Rich, 12:50 pm) uses the phrase “buying a peer group.” Private schools offer better opportunities to network with people who will become leaders in their fields and to avoid invidious elements. These benefits make schooling more enjoyable and can have long term consequences. By 3), I have in mind something like what Robin Hanson calls “showing that you care” applied to one’s kids rather than one’s parents. I, for example, may send my kids to the best private schools to show that I “spare no expense,” even if it means only a marginal improvement in the quality of educational outcomes as Robin persuasively argues is the case with medical spending.
Posted by: Blink at Jun 5, 2008 11:01:53 PM
Schooling is a complicated consumer purchase choice because it's hard to get clear information on schools and how they will interact with children. For example, Sandra Tsing Loh has been writing a fine series of articles for the Atlantic on her experiences as a parent with choosing schools in the San Fernando Valley, but there are wrinkles even she hasn't figured out yet. For example, we sent our kids for several years to the school she calls "Luther Hall," a mid-priced private school.
It took us years to figure out what was wrong with grades 6-8 there. See, lots of middle class people in LA are comfortable sending their children to the local public school for grades 1-5. But with puberty looming, they try hard to get their scions into more exclusive public school programs for grades 6-8, ones that often require testing high to get into. If their kids aren't that bright, however, and don't qualify for an exclusive public school program, then they pull them out of public school and send them to private schools like "Luther Hall." So, the mid-priced private schools end up full of very nice children from very nice families, but they're there because they aren't very bright, so the academic load isn't much.
So, for our younger son, we made sure to get him into the top-flight Science Academy at the local public middle school, under an energetic, charismatic superstar teacher who'd come very close to making it as an action movie star (at the end of the climactic fight in "Stargate," Kurt Russell chops his head off and then blows it up with a nuclear bomb). And our son wound up getting a 5 on the AP Biology exam in 7th grade.
So, we saved $20k and our kid got a better education. But ... you can mostly only find this stuff out by knowing people, so it's important to socialize with ambitious parents other than at your kid's current school who can clue you in. We found out how some of the exclusive programs in the LAUSD worked from other parents on our kid's baseball team at the park.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 5, 2008 11:11:23 PM
As a public performing arts school teacher I have an obvious bias. Yet teacher pay scales and quicker hire/fire decisions mean private schools are often able to bid more for the best teachers. That being said, it is strictly a location specific question. Gather information from former students and parents about schools in your area. Public school with private tutoring for specific subjects may be a cost effective option. Parental involvement is crucial regardless of public/private choice.
Posted by: CB at Jun 5, 2008 11:18:31 PM
After 4 (one disabled, one a slacker, one highly competitive, and one socially and artistically motivated) children in a variety of public and private schools, and moving more than desirable, I learned to rely on the attitude of the office staff as an indicator of a good school.
Attitude flows downhill and the attitude of the principal and other administrators always correlated with the attitude of the office staff and teachers.
If the office staff is surly, the teachers will be also. And you can bet that the principal is a jerk.
Posted by: Donna B. at Jun 6, 2008 12:59:02 AM
Jenny, the two comments I most agree with turn out to be written by the same person, Andromeda. The specific school and your specific child are all important. There are huge variations among private schools and can be huge differences from one school to the next in a school district. You must visit each school, ideally let your child spend a day in the school, among other things noting how welcoming the staff is to your visit. You need to talk to as many parents and children who have attended the school within the last few years as you can. Ask to see what the children did and learned and how they know their school is good or bad compared to others.
During the twelve years I spent on the board of a K-8 public school district (in California), I routinely asked people I met what they thought about whatever school, public or private, their children attended and whether they were pleased. I also visited all the private schools in our area. People's standards about what is satisfactory vary enormously. Thus it is best if you can actually talk with the kids and see what they have learned and how they felt. Most people actually know much less than they think they know about how their child's school compares with others, unless they have children in different schools. Also schools can change, with a time constant of something like 5 years, and many people have seriously wrong, out of date, ideas about the current situation at other schools. Your questions should be specific; for example what do you do for kids who are advanced in a reading? or in math? To illustrate the importance of this: our primary schools improved dramatically in a few years at accommodating children who read at different levels, but the outstanding math students were still bored routinely. Nevertheless the math instruction was quite good for the average bright upper middle class child... we just weren't willing challenge kids who would one day wind up at Caltech or MIT. My point is you need to assess your child very carefully as well as the school.
For California public primary schools you should be OK. Middle schools vary much more and high schools can set the tone of your child's life for the next ten years. If a school isn't working out don't be afraid to change, public or private, . As for testing, California schools report API scores on a scale of 200 to 1000. Any school with a score of over 800 is good enough academically for most bright kids, probably 750. If the scores are below 700 swallow your Prop 13 losses and move.
As your children grow older their interests and personalities matter so much. Our daughter went to an elite private high school. She was an excellent student and got a better education (especially in writing) than our son who was not such a dedicated student and went to a public high school. The big difference in their lives however was that our daughter got to swim and play water polo at the highest level which has had important implications for her life in the past 6 years. Our son did not want to go to the private school despite serious talent in these sports. We discovered later he already knew he didn't want to be pushed to excel in sports. The private school certainly would have pushed hard and probably would have made him miserable. Instead he got to be all-league his freshman year in two sports and knew more than his coaches (weak league, bad coaches). He wasn't any better as a senior, but he developed tremendously in ways more important to him. He truly enjoys and learned lot about a "diversity" of people. His education was good enough for him to do well at a UC without a huge effort.
It is a tough decision, but it is fairly easy to correct mistakes. Good luck.
Posted by: Norm at Jun 6, 2008 2:03:28 AM
Homeschool. It's worked great for our children. My daughter, now in grad school, got her tenth 4.0 semester in a row.
Posted by: Russell Nelson at Jun 6, 2008 3:01:59 AM
Implicit in the original post and all of the comments is the idea that there's nothing wrong with undertaking "a huge financial commitment" that "takes away our flexibility to do anything but grind away for the next 15 years" in hopes of giving Junior a better education. This is nuts!
Even if (and it's a big if) the private school does a better job, the idea that you should make a huge sacrifice for your child is unbalanced. You owe your child shelter, love, discipline, guidance, and three squares a day. Sacrificing yourself to the extent the post talked about may well turn out to be counterproductive. Two ways this can happen are (i) the parents constantly remind the child how much they gave up for him, leading to neurotic guilt, resentment, or both, or (ii) the child grows up feeling entitled to special treatment, or thinking that Mommy and Daddy can always be hit on for support, and thus never learns how to be his own man.
Posted by: Jeff at Jun 6, 2008 10:52:52 AM
Repeat after me:
SCHOOL ISN'T ABOUT EDUCATION. IT IS A JAIL FOR CHILDREN.
No matter how smart or dull your child, how much they learn during their school years will have precious little to do with the quality of instruction at the schools they attend.
As a smart child who survived 13 years in Denver Public Schools, my advice to parents of smart children is to let the school system do its worst, and take care of the meta-education at home. Make sure your child's eyes are open to the real lessons school teaches, e.g. about bureaucracy, institutional rigidity, rent-seeking, social dynamics, and so on. And if they want to pursue something, be it computers or music or outdoors activities or whatever, support their passion. Lastly, if they choose to resist the system, breaking rules that are unjust or cutting classes that serve no purpose, back them up.
Posted by: Noah Yetter at Jun 6, 2008 12:16:41 PM
I question how necessary kindergarten is for any child. Kindergarten is relatively new and as far as I can tell is not a good determination of future academic success. Early math skills do seem to be a good predictor of later academic success, but you could make sure to give your kid basic math skills at home, especially since math is normally not emphasized in most kindergarten classrooms.
Posted by: severin at Jun 6, 2008 12:55:07 PM
If we're talking kindergarten, put them in the school with the best teachers and smallest classes. Then move them after 3rd grade (so the financial commitment is not as lengthy or large if private schools are the best match) since your kids don't really have "friends" yet and the difference between public and private from grade 4 to graduate school essentially disappears as long as you are not comparing two drastically different schools. (i.e. Private Catholic elementary versus the most dangerous inner-city public school) I'm not saying that private is better than public at any grade range, each school is different and at each stage of your child's education, you need to find what works best.
K-3, lots of personal attention and sound curriculum
4-7, solid curriculum, good peers, competent teachers, parental reinforcement of learning at home
8-12, diverse interaction with peers, incompetent teachers can be replaced with self-learning as long as a good curriculum and self-discipline is followed, lots of extra-curricular activities and exposure to different disciplines
Posted by: v at Jun 6, 2008 1:19:04 PM
I'm highly skeptical (with Stephen Davies) of the idea of school when compared to education. I view the public schools as free daycare. The education of my children is my responsibility.
If my kids happen to learn enough to satisfy me in public school, so much the better, but I'm the one who determines the standard and who must fill in any deficiencies should they arise.
Send 'em to public school and then pay for twice a week tutoring. Much more worth the money.
That said, excellent prep schools can be a dramatic step above what is offered in public schools. I read Plato, Camus, Sarte, Nietzche, Frankl, etc. in high school at Albuquerque Academy, and it has made a huge difference.
Nathan
Posted by: jurisnaturalist at Jun 6, 2008 4:10:57 PM
Depends on the private school, but private is the way to go. I agree with the above poster about "prep" schools. Most of them still teach Latin and Greek, which is the only foundation for a sound liberal arts (old sense) education.
They also, through peer interaction, teach children how to behave and socialize. It's contrary to "popular opinion," but my private school peers were much more tolerant, sweet, kind, open to difference, and interesting than my public school ones. Friends the same in both, of course, but the general quality of people was much, much higher in the private school.
Elementary might not be that valuable, but parents, if you can afford it, by middle or at least high school, do your children a favor and look into them. "Catching up" by going to a good college or even for some, waiting until grad school to get a solid education, makes things much harder.
I've tutored really bright middle school children who could run circles around the college-educated working professionals I taught who were preparing to go to business school. These years matter.
Posted by: Melancholy Korean at Jun 6, 2008 7:37:27 PM
Education is what you make of it.
Period.
There are a few people who are inspired by another few people and that's great.
There are, however, vast numbers of students in both public and private schools who are not doing anything and will not do anything in the future.
That is the puzzle of education. One learns when one is ready to learn. The moment is neither predictable nor controllable.
So you put your kid in an environment that is prepared to stuff him or her with knowledge at the drop of a hat, and hope for the best.
Public? Private? Meh
Posted by: Bob Calder at Jun 7, 2008 10:39:14 PM
Just noticed some of the blab about tuition. AND the idiotic fantasy of public schools not being able to fire poor teachers. They are able to do so.
Jeb Bush's girls went to Gulliver in Miami which had a tuition at that time about $24,000. Saint Andrew's, Pinecrest, Benjamin, and Ransom-Everglades are priced just below $20,000. In Florida, these schools are grouped within an hour's drive of each other. There are hundreds of private schools in the state that takes seven hours to drive from top to bottom, but they are basically not any better than the public high school my son went to in Delray Beach.
So-called Christian schools have worse math and science scores than public schools when adjusted for student's family income.
Masses of anecdotal evidence won't get you anywhere Tyler.
Posted by: Bob Calder at Jun 7, 2008 11:01:31 PM
I'll join the anecdotal free-for-all even though practically no one will read this. Based on my private school education, I do think high-quality private schools typically help develop stronger writing skills (as someone commented). They also often create a community where hard work and intellectual/academic excellence are expected and admired. Compared to the average public school, that indoctrination is quite valuable, in my opinion. Clearly, the stereotypical drugs and money boarding school is a different case.
As for networking and questions of class, I have no doubt my high school network could be very valuable, although I've never tried to take advantage of it. I also think the social circles were a little skewed towards wealth, but that's something a grounded family can definitely counteract.
When I have kids, I'll probably be fine sending them to public schools if the local schools are very high-quality. Otherwise, I'd seriously consider private school despite the financial burden. What it really boils down to is that I would have been dreadfully bored and not challenged in the average public school. I wouldn't really want my kids having that experience.
Posted by: Greg at Jun 8, 2008 5:58:14 PM
Bob Calder wrote: "Education is what you make of it.
Period."
Blame the victim, huh? Like analyses which attribute success in school to "culture" or family characterstics, throwing responsibility onto the student ("you") doesn't explain large and statistically significant relations between school variables (school size, district size, teachers certification requirements, etc.), on the one hand, and measures of student performance, positive and negative, on the other.
Bob Calder wrote: "So-called Christian schools have worse math and science scores than public schools when adjusted for student's family income."
Caroline Hoxby contends that this generalization depends on comparing nation-wide aggregates, and that it fails when one compares State (government, generally)-operated schools and parochial schools in the same locality. Andrew Coulson contends that the generalization (from an NCES study) depends on faulty determination of "family income" in parochial schools, since NCES used participation in the free and reduced price lunch program as the surrogate for "low-income". Since some parochial schools do not participate in the free and reduced price lunch program, they will record zero students in the program, giving the appearance that all the students in such a school are middle-class or above.
Beyond the US, many studies find an advantage in independent schools.
Gerard Lassibile and Lucia Navarro Gomez
"Organization and Efficiency of Educational Systems: some empirical findings", pg. 16,
Comparative Education , Vol. 36 #1, 2000, Feb.
"Furthermore, the regression results indicate that countries where private education is more widespread perform significantly better than countries where it is more limited. The result showing the private sector to be more efficient is similar to those found in other contexts with individual data (see, for example, Psucharopoulos, 1987; Jiminez, et. al, 1991).
This finding should convince countries to reconsider policies that reduce the role of the private sector in the field of education".
See also
Joshua Angrist,
"Randomized Trials and Quasi-Experiments in Education Research"
NBER Reporter, summer, 2003.
See also Herman Brutsaert's comparison of parochial and government schools in Belgium (which subsidizes parent choice of school). Standardized test scores were higher in parochial schools and the correlation between parent SES and test scores was lower (State schools exacerbate inequality).
Posted by: Malcolm Kirkpatrick at Jun 8, 2008 7:58:51 PM
If you have the cash to consider $21k / year for K -12 but are worried about the public school system then you are in the wrong neighborhood. Upgrade your house and find a decent public school system. Most likely you are worried about a public school system that is not that bad. Financially, it makes no sense. Consider this, your child goes to private school then as a result gets in a good college that they otherwise would not have. Or they go to public school and you use the $.5 MM you saved (investing each year) to bribe someone to let them in the same school. Half a million might not buy a building but a hundred grand cash in a personal account goes a long way to make admission more likely.
Posted by: John at Jun 9, 2008 12:57:49 PM
You are buying a peer group, I was educated in poor conditions in Mississippi, but my peer group was always curious and active. You get what you pay for, but if you already live in an elitist neighborhood you have already paid for the peer group you are seeking by putting people in private schools. Why pay twice? Choose the margin which is most economic.
Posted by: mt at Jun 10, 2008 9:58:40 AM
I attended private school for preschool, all the way up through high school. Throughout most of it, I always wondered why my parents were spending 7,000 (and we were lucky, as my family got half off) a year for the education. Knowing a few kids who had made the switch from my school to public school, and seeing how well they are doing, that was a big question of mine. These are just a few of things I've noticed / would like to comment on
1. Despite people saying private schools are more attractive to colleges, I would say that criteria only matters when it comes down to a a borderline decision for admittance. When you think about it, most kids entering college come from public schools, so i would say that private schools don't really offer advantages, when it comes to admittance (especially this year apparently, where some of the top seniors at my state wide renowned private school did not get into their top choice colleges).
2. When it comes to advanced course offering, i don't think there really is a set standard that public schools offer more. I know I was able to take any AP course I wanted at my high school, with teachers even willing to start independent studies for APs without an official class (perhaps a benefit of private schooling there).
While I definitley do not believe that the education itself was worth an cost of 7 grand (14 grand for other people), I think the advantage that I received from private schooling was college prep and work ethic. At least at my school, we were doing weekly, sometimes daily, papers. We had research projects that had to be 15 pages, presentations that had to be 25 minutes, etc. When college came around, I did not worry about school at all. College was, and continues to be, child's play for me.
I don't think there really is any good answer to the question public or private. If I had to make the choice right now, I'd definitely probably go public till at least the junior high years, and then private for high school. The work I did in my high school years more than made up for the cost, and it is paying off very very high dividends in college.
Posted by: Mike at Jun 10, 2008 11:46:14 AM
At private school you get (1) other children whose parents' paid $20K+/year to send them there; (2) children are groomed for college, getting a resume of extracurricular activities that look good to college admissions committees.
Posted by: Half Sigma at Jun 10, 2008 12:05:11 PM
Every person making comments here have an enormous advantage over many of the children in so called bad public schools. You care about education, either public or private the one thing that makes a difference is that parents care about and get involved in their children's education. Vouchers, magnet schools, private schools have one major thing in common and that is the parents that put their children in those schools care about the child's education. Bad schools are not the fault of bad teachers but are bad because of the expectation that the school can overcome the social issues of the children that go there. The inmates now run the asylum! Administrators and teachers are afraid to discipline kids because there is a lawyer waiting around every corner. Bless you for caring enough for you children to try and decide if public or private school is the right thing, your kids will be fine either way because you care.....
Posted by: Ron at Jun 22, 2008 5:26:50 PM
It depends on the school as to which is better.
Posted by: annie at Jun 26, 2008 3:58:39 PM
On this question, most people recommend what they went through. So you have to ignore the recommendation and see if the reasoning applies to you.
Economically speaking, you should send your child to a public school until high school, then switch to private school for high school. (What I did!) It is the minimum investment that will reap the rewards of private education, which are substantial (e.g., manifesting in your child's earning power).
A non-economic argument: elementary school is as important for social development as anything else, and social development happens best in a public school, usually. For high school, usually the best private school in your area offers an education that is a big step up from what the best public school in your area offers.
Posted by: Andrew at Jul 10, 2008 8:26:55 PM
I am just getting out of high school in a couple of months and just wanted to give you some advice on letting your child go to public school. One of my friends I have at church is homeschooled and yes she is graduating a year early but is also graduating behind me two years in math and has not taken a college course ahead of time. She is also pretty socially awkward. I am excelling in my senior year of high school with a 3.8 GPA overall and am in a college prep course called Advanced Composition, and an AP course of Psychology. And yes, my year is tough with PreCalc, Multi-cultural Literature, Biology. The great thing about my school though is you choose almost all of your classes junior and senior year and we have a mod scheduling just like colleges. Altogether, your children's social skills will be advanced with public, and they will learn to make the right choices when it comes to drugs, alcohol, etc....Everyone says "Oh everyone's doing it...referring to sex, drugs etc...Well to tell you the truth...It's not happening as much as people like to say it is. Parenting will play a nice role in the long run also. Try a trick that worked with me....My parents let me choose my curfew my senior year, but I also have to get up early for school. So it is my choice overall when I come home, but I have to tell them when I will be home and where I will be. One time they break your trust in anything, even as little as getting up late for school as a result from staying up too late the night before, take away the car for a week, the cell phone, or their social life. Trust me it works because now after learning to be responsible in my actions, and making right choices I don't have to lose anything. Losing that stuff may seem like nothing, but when you have to walk to work, try to get rides, and even borrow another student's cell phone to call mom and dad for a week, U LEARN YOUR LESSON!!! Public school is the way to go!
Posted by: Katie at Oct 20, 2008 7:33:31 PM
Thank you to all the commenters. We are making this decision now, and your insights have helped.
Posted by: catherine at Oct 22, 2008 9:05:56 PM
