Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Differences between public and private schools

You make the assumption that testing for "national norms" means something - and that public schools do better with testing to national norms. I have seen people who can test well but have no capacity to really be a thinker (nor get very far) and vice versa.

One of the things I wrestled with when we were given DS's scores that stunned us was - what exactly do I consider an education? How/where do we want that educational setting to be? And that is going to be very personal - for some families, it is to be "best at every academic level", for some, it is "must go to ivy league/research", for some, it is to be at least at the "national" level for each grade. So schools (and to some extent, the teachers) will usually reflect the collective values of the parents - although public schools have to figure out how to combine the collective parental body's values with the bureaucratic dictates set by government.

Note - not all Texas parents are focused on football, and Texas has some great schools and great universities... all states will have pockets of poor schools and good schools - public and/or private, even in the highly touted MA (my husband went to a "highly regarded" public school system in MA, and we would never send our children to a school system like that. ever).

My public high school was located in a blue-collar exurb with a high percentage of ESL students. Test scores would have put it solidly in the bottom third of the state. Its one claim to excellence was a top-ranked football team.

And yet, I had an outstanding educational experience there. It was the first time in my life I was actually challenged and engaged. In some cases, the high school classes were superior in that respect to their collegiate equivalents.

The major reason why the quality was so good for an HG student in a bad school: it was LARGE. As a result, there was a large-enough pool of AP students that a particular AP class would be available most hours of the day, allowing for flexible scheduling. Want to do two histories or two lab sciences in the same year? No problem. Is your English preference for AP Literature or AP Composition? We have different teachers specializing on each. Trying to take full advantage of the top-notch fine arts and/or foreign language programs? We offer early AP subject classes before the start of the normal school day, and other required subjects during summer school, so you can make room in your schedule for more electives.

A large school also meant a large faculty, with the best qualified and evaluated teachers tabbed for the AP classes. With one glaring exception, all of my teachers were very knowledgeable about their subject matter, and passionate about sharing that knowledge.

I share this experience because there have been a number of parents reporting how the highly-ranked public or private school failed to meet the needs of their gifted children on this forum, and my experience is the converse, where a poorly-ranked public school served the needs of a gifted child surprisingly well. The takeaway is rankings or reputation tell you little about individual experiences within an educational setting.

An overarching difference between public and private schools is that currently public schools are charged with closing achievement gaps, performance gaps, excellence gaps. While some efforts may be successful at helping to bring up students at the bottom, another way to close achievement gaps is to limit the growth/performance/achievement of students at the top.

The one size/type must fit all approach to education is a large part of our problems.

I am joining this thread late, but Massachusetts has a number of public school systems that I consider to be as good or better than all but a few of the nation's best private schools. And I'm talking about schools available to anyone in the town, not exam schools like Boston Latin.

Our school system does not encourage grade acceleration, nor is there really separate classes for gifted kids. Yet my son's grade has has 3 of top 100 math students in the country, and recent high school grads have included an IMO gold medalist and Davidson Scholarship award winner. The average SAT score is above the 90th percentile.

And there is another public school system in Massachusetts that is arguably even better. These schools are admittedly rare, and the towns are somewhat expensive to live in. But given the cost of private school tuition, they are an absolute bargain. I am sure there are similar schools in many other states as well.

I disagree. Somewhat expensive = $300,000 to $500,000 premium on housing. Even the super expensive $40,000 a year schools are less than that, and I've heard they give generous aid to even wealthy families.

But, even that's assuming that these prestigious districts are appropriate for gifted kids rather than highly pressured hothouse kids, which is (from what I've heard) debatable. Several people have told me that a mediocre district is more flexible for kids beyond the norm.