Do you send your kid to private school?

[boysx4]

We sent two of our boys to private for 4 years (2 years was preschool, but still taught by the same teachers) and then made a difficult decision to move them to public. Now I will say we have wonderful public schools around here (and we are school of choice). Small student/teacher ratio, highest in the county mandated test scores, and very tech savvy. But we thought that private would still provide a better education for them. When we moved them to public I will say BOTH my children were behind their public school counterparts. I was floored. They were never behind, always ahead at the private school. So for us moving to the public school was the best thing we could have done.

[sarchamar]

Our kids will be in private school for as long as we can afford it (which is hopefully all the way through). I have nothing against public schools in general, but the ones where we live have been through a lot of upheaval in the last several years. As a result, class sizes are skyrocketing and educational quality is plummeting. There have been so many issues over district lines that people who live a less than two miles from one school may be forced to send their children to a school twenty miles away instead. This is just as true for kindergarteners as it is for high schoolers, BTW.

So our choices were to put our child on a bus for three hours a day in order to have her placed in a classroom with 34 other small children in what is now one of the lowest-performing districts in the narion, or make the sacrifices necessary to afford tuition at a school where the max class size is 22, test scores are well above the national average, and there's excellent communication between teachers/administration and students' families. The kids get lots of individual attention, and the school is very good about offering flexibility for kids of different abilities. While nothing is perfect, I'm very pleased with our experience so far.

We're not alone in sacrificing for private school, either -- most of the families there are like us, educated but firmly middle-class. I'm just grateful that we have the means to do that, even if it means running a very tight budget. I'm sure there are plenty of families out there who would also prefer private schools, but just can't make it work no matter how hard they try. I really feel for them. Moving to another district isn't an option for most people right now either (us included), thanks to a terrible housing market.

At this point, I would go through all the logistical gymnastics required to homeschool before I would send my kids to any local public school. And that is something I never thought I would say.

[yatts10]

Originally Posted by ARogers Yes it is free I don't know if it's the same in your area but here it's a lottery system. I'm not a big fan of GA public education though. I am from Northern VA and DH is from MA where the school systems are really great.

Yes it's the lottery system all over the state. My hubby is from Maryland and.when he moved down her he said.he was so advanced he could skip 2 grades...

[yatts10]

Originally Posted by mcpforever I'm with momtojande. It's not about "public" vs "private." It's about individual schools. You wouldn't just look at one private school if you were thinking about sending your child to private school, would you? About 2 years ago, I looked at one private school and compared it to one public school. The public school ended up being the better choice. Now, I'm certain that if I had looked at more private schools I could have found a private one that is "better" that the particular public school I was looking at. I could have found public schools that are "worse," too. But those weren't really options on the table, so I compared what was.

Good point!