I think it depends. DD (is a DYS) attends a small private school. We love it and so does she! No, the work is not necessarily hard for her but it is about a year ahead of our local public school. It is engaging though, she always has interesting projects to work on, papers to write, and tests to study for. It is engaging and that makes a huge difference in terms of my child's happiness at school. The big thing though is that the level of work required preparation and organization, for everybody! Is she working hard, probably not. Is she working and developing executive function, for sure. Every student that has left the school she attends graduates in the top three at public high school (our public schools average around 2,000 HS students).