Gifted Issues Discussion homepage

Exactly. Talent (i.e. compensation) is, unsurprisingly, the lion's share of expenditures for most human capital based organizations. In our public system in Canada, the salary component of K-12 expenditures reaches up to the high 80%s, mostly thanks to the paltry materials offering for students, generous union pay increases, and increasingly dilapidated infrastructure.

From my own research among Canadian private schools, this figure can creep below 50%, reflecting some combination of, among other factors:

- endowments for financial aid,
- property and equipment,
- lower teacher compensation,
- contracted extra-curricular activities,
- lobbying / consulting fees,
- travel

With the price points mentioned in the article, I would expect the compensation share of tuition to be around 50-60%.

As with any purchase, it's best to be informed about what you're paying vs what you're receiving. And aeh, you make an excellent point about public schools not being free - there's an implicit housing price and tax cost associated with living in the catchment of competitive schools.

This study from the St. Louis Fed finds there is about an 11% price premium at purchase, all else equal, for mean houses located in the zones of schools one standard deviation above average in terms of school "quality" (based on MAP scores). The study doesn't extrapolate premia beyond 1SD, but even with a conservative estimate of a linear relationship, it wouldn't be out of the realm of reasonable for a family to pay upwards of $200K for school quality premia on a $1MM home in urban areas served by magnet schools, and a 10%+ lift in annual property taxes as a result. And, if families move once to recalibrate for preferred middle/high school, you could see transactions costs plus premia exceed $250K easily.

Put in that context, for a single child household, the private schools mentioned in the article are 2.5-3 times the annual cost of a public school with scores ~2SD above the mean - just shy of $17K/year amortized over 12 years with one move for a $1MM home vs a median US private tuition + ancillary expense of about $16K/year.

So, at the risk of gross over-simplification from these *very* rough estimates: factoring in the opportunity cost of capital, families with one child would be financially better off sending their child to private school than splurging on a house in a competitive school district, all else equal, in many parts of the US. This relationship would be even more unfavourable for public school attendance the more expensive the home, and the smaller the % down payment.

Sources: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/10/05/Chiodo.pdf

https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-private-school

This may be an especially important realization for families with a gifted child, as government schools are increasingly focused on equal OUTCOMES, and may not offer gifted children learning opportunities and experiences with appropriate challenge in their zone of proximal development (ZPD), and with intellectual peers.

Unfortunately, in following the links from the OP's post, some of the wide range of materials appear to suggest a goal of equal OUTCOMES also at this private school... or even a ceiling imposed based on race/ethnicity... specifically shaming white pupils based on the color of their skin.

In selecting a school, parents may need to look beneath the surface and beyond past admissions history of a school's alumni.

Well, 2 of my posts got deleted. Probably too political. But I thought my points were relevant to the discussion.

I am in that group paying tuition for a private academic. And my kid is trying for that Ivy, she has legacy.

But I think the whole issue is about what society is going through now. As I had written, Harvard let about 200 less kids in ED, than 2 years ago. Probably due to deferrals. But they let in twice as many African American, first time college than they had last year.

There is a major attitude change. Now, I will not write what I wrote before, because then my post will be taken down.

I only saw your first post, Wren, but think it was relevant, and you framed your commentary reasonably for the forum. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see the second.

We’re also a private school family, though I will encourage DS to focus on Canadian schools for undergrad. His current school is able to provide a more individualized learning program, to an extent that would not be possible in public alternatives available to us. It’s truly market failure, and it’s hampering students’ futures. It angers me that it is only my privilege that allows DS to access what others like him cannot, through no fault of their own. It’s a contemptible injustice.

If anyone ever wants to get me up on a soapbox, introduce the topic of tenured, unionized teachers and pass me a glass of Shiraz.

Good luck to your DD!

I will put this question to the group: to what extent do you think poor accommodations for different learners (gifted, 2e) are actually a deterrent to families having more than one child? Are gifted children and exceptional learners becoming the human equivalent of luxury goods due to gaps in our education system?

It’s a question I’ve been giving some thought to. In Canada, I fear a focus on integration of different learners into gen ed classes will actually be socially regressive and magnify existing socioeconomic and racial disparities, despite the stated goal being the opposite. 😡

And to add context...we're an eclectic schooling family. We've had children in public, private, and homeschooling, usually more than one of the above at any given moment, with the decision on schooling very much individualized to the child and the moment. (At the moment, public and home.) So certainly, all formats can have their advantages for specific children.

On another note, one of the qualities I like about my place of employment is that our catchment crosses district lines (we're a regionalized school), with both fairly high SES and high needs communities, all of whom contribute to the system, which allows some students (not enough, unfortunately) from less-resourced communities to benefit from the tangibles and intangibles contributed by and typically accessible to more-generously-resourced communities, including some of those associated with college admissions. The benefits accrue both directions, of course, although they are not of precisely the same nature.

Everyone earns a spot the same way, with demonstrated performance in the context of their sending schools, and has access once there (as far as we can control conditions inside school) to the same extracurricular and advanced opportunities. (We don't charge fees for extracurriculars like sports, clubs, or afterschool enrichment activities. Even for uniforms and equipment. Nor do families incur out-of-pocket expenses (including textbooks) for AP courses/exams or dual enrollment up to and including an associate's degree by graduation.) Less talk, more action...

At the extremes, I think it likely does have some impact on the choice to have additional children. Certainly the families I have encountered, especially those with 2e learners, seem to be slanted toward fewer children (anecdotally). I would imagine that, if parenting a child with exceptionalities in the early childhood years (already intrinsically a rather labor intensive age) also involves carting one's child around to multiple specialists, trying to tease out their needs and the appropriate therapies (among which I would include, for purposes of this discussion, appropriately servicing their exceptional strengths), parents might find the thought of "another child like this one" a bit intidimidating. And expensive. All of those therapies, even when partially covered by insurance, add up quickly.

And on integration/inclusion/mainstreaming: I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, I am a strong proponent of inclusionary practices for the left-hand tail, especially when paired with appropriate intensive services (in or out of the general education classroom) for the most critical need areas. When done well, without the flavor of tokenism that can sometimes creep in. And the long-term data on this have been that it is generally net positive with regard to providing greater access to the wider community for most of those who would once have been educated in substantially-separate settings. I have seen students at -3 SD function quite successfully on both an academic and a social level in inclusion settings. Again, when done well.

On the other hand, there are those on both extremes whose needs are so far outside of what a general education teacher has expertise (or time) to address, even with a specialized co-teacher, that differentiated instruction within the general education classroom is not going to meet them where they are or need to be. To be fair, I've had some 2e students at +3 SD also do well socially--but they've had the advantage in our setting of other points of commonality with their peers, in the non-academic side of their education, which has very different metrics for success, many of which are discrete skill-based, often both self-paced and collaborative, and reward initiative and creativity. Academically, the inclusion model hasn't been quite as effective, unless one counts the dual enrollment program, which essentially is inclusion of NT students into advanced coursework (in supported early college coursework).

A strong inclusion classroom will have both skilled general educators and skilled educational specialists (in an ideal world, for both below- and above-level learners), working collaboratively and seamlessly to bridge core content to each student at their need level. That's the theory, anyway. I've seen it work for about a 4 SD spread when two skilled teachers trust each other. I've also seen catastrophic failures. So much depends on the execution.

I’ll give your reply some thought tomorrow, aeh, when my brain less closely resembles a pancake.

Re: execution - this apparent idiosyncrasy in outcomes is a good way to capture my concern. That there is a distribution of outcomes is to be expected, but that the confidence interval around the mean can be so wide seems preventable through intelligent systemic design. It sounds like your district is particularly thoughtful in its programming.

More anon...

I don't have a child with any learning exceptionalities, of the struggling sort.

Though there is a K-8 school in Manhattan that provides full integration. They have wheel chair access, so they can accommodate anyone. So children without, spend 2 or 3 years from K-8 in a integrated classroom. There is only about 8 -10 kids in the class. There are teaching assistants for all children that need it. There were high tech computer mice for children, who can't move, to use. This was a dozen years ago. It takes a lot of money and should be concentrated in a few schools, just like gifted programs, otherwise the resources are not as good.

I just think that they need to equalize opportunity by improving tech and wifi in schools. So that any child can get access to online programs, if they have the interest and ability.

In the article, it was mentioned that Fieldstone offered about 5 science classes for 11th and 12th graders. Astrophysics, etc etc. But now kids can do coursera. DD has done oceanography and marine science courses in coursera. (thanks Bostonian for bringing that up in some discussion) She can do AP Chinese as a self study because there is preply. (that does cost money for a tutor) but it is an example that there are many options now out there.

As for having one child. I was older, no success earlier, hence more than one was just not an option. But in hindsight, one has taken a lot of energy, though I provided so many different extracurriculars and travel. We have a dog, going to be 12 this summer. She started out the first year with problems. Thought it was kidneys, turned out to be diabetes insipidus. So lot of tests, leaking problems all over. And she was a frisbee dog and two years ago had spinal surgery, and it just goes on and on. Luckily I bought insurance when she was 7. But it takes a lot of time and care to deal with all her stuff. Just this past week, she had a cyst taken off her ear (after it grew back from being removed last year) and had a little "liposuction" to grow stem cells to try and help the degeneration in her shoulder. And there are many other things-- due to frisbee related trauma on her body. I do not know how someone deals with stuff with their kid. I cannot imagine the effort and stress it must be to provide accommodations for their child when they need it to optimize their abilities.

I think that that I am overboard in what I try and provide for my child. We have extended family where the parents put all 6 kids in soccer. Two oldest boys got free rides at a very good school with soccer recruitments. She asked me how I got DD into sailing. I said I had sailed as a kid and it was just one of the things I had her try. She has made a TV commercial, she has come second in a ballet pointe competition, she has won speech and debate competitions, done well in DECA. She then narrowed her focus on tech, sailing and marine science but she knows what she likes and doesn't like. And at 15, she had been to all 7 continents. I could do this with one kid.