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

I went to two different public high schools that were nationally ranked and in some of the wealthiest parts of the country - one high school with some of the craziest tiger parents I have ever seen starting from kindergarten (and it is probably even worse now). And the amount of showing off of their wealth was so extreme that I hated to tell people what town(s) I lived in - and the public schools reflected those values.

My big issue with our public schools is that DS has not even had a chance to start, and we already hit head on into the age cutoff policy - and DS was already lashing out due to boredom in a traditional age preschool despite our attempts to push them to get what DS needed. We had to make a change, and only option was private school.

suevv, my main point with the statement that public schools have to take everyone is not on dealing with children with special needs but mainly even if the child does not want to be there and the family is not interested in addressing their child's educational needs, the rest of the kids in that class is still stuck with the churn and issues that comes with that child. We got a taste of that apathy in preschool (before the director finally gave up and asked the family to leave, when it became clear that the parents had no interest in addressing their child's misbehavior - violence towards other children that did not improve at all - after a few very long months). All the kudos to you that you work so hard to push and advocate for your child.

But for me, apathy is hard to battle - and that is what I find difficult to find acceptable for my children. So filling out an tediously long application or making effort to get teacher recommendations usually indicates that there is strong interest to be involved - there is some value to that. In fact, the author alludes to this with the AP English example - where just the act of getting teacher recommendation to apply tends to make those students more alert and focused in their class... I think there is something to that. I have experienced that in various times of my own school experiences, where that process of applying to a program/class (in public schools) really made those classes/program different - and where I feel we really got the best of what school was about. But those are rare.

This theoretical model is inconsistent with the facts for most private schools in the U.S. According to the National Center for Education Statistics http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_211.10.asp average salaries for public and private school teachers in 2011-2012 was $53K and $40K, and the differences persist when conditioning on highest degree attained. The differences in non-salary benefits are huge. Private school teachers are not accruing pensions.

Which is why I stipulated well-run.

I agree that the model I pitched isn't common.

Private school teachers usually are not state-licensed teachers, even if they are well educated. You don't need to offer the same salary to hire them and keep them. Furthermore, public school teacher compensation is boosted by their politically powerful unions, which can determine the outcomes of many elections in state legislatures and governors' races.

Opportunity cost is opportunity cost. Assuming a top quality private school teacher is employable in the public sector, or in a lucrative research/industry position, schools have to compete to retain talent, just like any other industry.

I wasn't limiting this to "rich" or "kids." But my points have gone off the track of what I was trying to say about why public school appears to have worked better for our family. I've edited my posts to try to re-focus.

I have yet to find this mythical small private school that only charge $7000 and is willing to be flexible. Maybe I need to look harder.

I was very interested to read that private school teachers in US can be paid less and less qualified, although I am sure there are exceptions. As a general rule the opposite is true here. All teachers must be registered and accredited to the same base standard. Private school teachers are often paid more and may have done further training, a Masters degree for example.

Pay here is generally higher than the U.S. if what I read here is true. Entry salaries are around $58000 and can go to $110000 depending on the state. The catch is finding a permanent job. A substantial number of teachers are on contract which is for the school year and so are not paid for the six week summer holidays.

I think some of the problems between public and private schools exist here too. Paying a lot of money doesn't necessarily mean the best education, can be a means to socialize with a different social strata and access the benefits of the "old boys network", it can be about being seduced by a pretty facility rather than what happens in the classroom and it doesn't guarantee they will take children with challenges. In fact, the opposite can occur if it impacts on their state test averages and makes the school look like a poorer performer. Definitely not true of every privte school though.

where I am in NZ we are in the middle of several very good privates - they are all very large though.

We have opted for public school in primary/intermediate and the private for secondary. Our reasoning is that the private school benefits won't really kick in until year 7/8 so that saves us $$$ plus we would like our kids to experience some diversity - our city is very very WHITE, our local public has a very high Maori/Pacifika student body so this is great. The local private does not :-(

Also - as a family that can indeed produce some very elitest children if we chose to, sending them to public will hopefully nip that sense of entitlement in the butt.

We like the private school because the opportunities they offer in terms of facilities and activities are just so much more than the public secondary schools. Thankfully we are in a position to send our kids. There is nothing wrong with the local public high school, it's just not as good as the private.

BTW as someone in a fortunate life position - I'd like to point out that I am at great pains to make sure my kids never take anything for granted.

My apologies if anyone was offended. Obviously, I don't think that all, or even most, prep school families are elitist snobs. And clearly, there are substantial numbers of families who sacrifice significantly to send their children to elite (in the academic sense) private schools. But I do think that there is a subculture for which certain kinds of schools are enriched--perhaps it's not wealth per se that is the selective quality, but there may be correlates. For instance, is it unreasonable to postulate that schools with standout physical facilities (similarly, not bad in themselves) are more likely to attract families for whom visible qualities in a school resonate more than teacher warmth does? These families would be much less likely to fetch up at tiny schools whose selling point primarily is intimacy. Maybe I should have put it the other way, that elitist attitudes are less likely to attend small, no-name private schools, but they have to go somewhere. One could probably say as easily that this mentality tends to preferentially move into certain public school districts. But those districts are by no means entirely occupied by people with this attitude.

Big, facilities-rich schools are marketing a certain product. Small, cozy schools are selling a different one. It would not be surprising if they ended up with different clientele.