Well, my first advice to anyone considering the merits of private school
versus public is to
know the legal lay of the land.The reason is simple: private schools (mostly) aren't obliged to do anything extraordinary for children whose needs are outside the "norm" (whatever that happens to be for the private school in question).
Public schools are subject to LAWS that force them to at least address learning differences. Or to pretend that they are with a lot of meetings and paperwork, if you like. They also can't show anyone the door because of their differences, no matter how extreme-- they HAVE to provide education to everyone. Whether it is appropriate or not is, of course, a separate matter.
In the worst case scenarios, you can simply walk away from a private school-- or be told to leave-- since they may baldly refuse to accommodate differences in children. It's not against the law... and there are often political pressures on private schools to
weed out kids that
are "different." Consider this, if you will; a school with a reputation for "exceptional academics" isn't going to want a child that demonstrates that it isn't challenging enough, for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that other parents may be miffed if their own children don't seem quite as exceptional as they were hoping as a result of the comparison, if you see my point.
Besides, if they'll "give extra" stuff to YOUR child... why not MINE?? I pay tuition too! (See the problem for administrators?)
Public schools, on the other hand, may also refuse to do anything special for gifted children... and in some places, they have the full backing of state law there. Or they may be obligated to make accommodations, but only go there reluctantly and incrementally, kicking and screaming through tense meeting after tense meeting, while slowly sucking every ounce of your energy as a parent-advocate, and leaching all of the joy from your everyday life for years on en--
Er-- sorry. PTSD. Bit of a Debbie Downer moment there. LOL. But seriously; it definitely pays to know how this has gone for others
locally. Every school is different-- and it starts (generally) from the top down. So if you have a local administrator at the district level that is committed to one-size-must-fit-all, "all children are gifted" thinking, you're going to have trouble, no matter what the law says. In that case, looking private makes sense.
Also true (in a general sense) is that most charters (which are public schools) and private schools have higher
baseline expectations, which means a better fit for gifted kids from the start. However, they may also be less flexible with respect to acceleration, and particularly with differentiation that has any possibility to look like a desirable 'perk' for your child.
ANY school can be a good one, and any school can be a bad one. It really just depends on how open-minded the people running it are and how well their "usual" way of doing things is going to match your child's needs. The less tweaking necessary, the better luck you'll have convincing educators of the wisdom of trying it.
In either case, expect to need to do advocacy from time to time.
HTH!
ETA: full disclosure here, I have spent the last decade as a volunteer parent advocate for a disability support group, so my take on this is based on those experiences and not so much on GT needs.
