Private Shools vs Public Schools

The problem in the US is that most school systems are funded by their tax base - made up of people who own their homes/properties/businesses. It pretty much garauntees that suburban schools are best funded and urban and rural schools are not (because of small tax bases).

 
I agree with this to a point. Suburban schools are typically the best because that's where the high income lives (on the outside of the big city). Higher income = higher taxes = more money for the school. The schools around Lansing, MI are crazy - Multimillion $$ pools, buildings, sport programs and so on. The schools within the city however are struggling and even being shut down in some cases. They are riddled with gangs, drugs, and so on. Those that do live in the inner cities pay to send their kids to charter schools or private schools if they can afford it.
 
It's a shame that those kids who are not so priveledged get the shaft in regards to education. But it's the way of things in the US (my opinion).

For the record, parents do not pay to send their children to charter schools, they are publicly funded, and paid for by the local school district that the school is a part of, like in Philadelphia, the Creative and Performing Arts charter school is paid for by the school district. In the case that the charter school is not run by a district, the district that the student would attend pays for the student to go. We also have cyber charter school in PA, and some other states have them. My sister goes to one, and our local district pays a portion of money to the charter school.
The only people I know that go to private schools here are catholic, and we also have a quaker private school. People send kids from all over (literally, a student in this year's graduating class was from India) but I have no idea what % of students are from the local area.

Yes, there are many private schools in the US---but what they are like and how popular they are depends so much on where they are.
 
Keep in mind the population of Canada is about 32 million and the population of the US is about 302 million. California has about 4 million people more than Canada[] .
 
In some areas private schools evolved to fill a void including many founded/run by religious groups. Depending on the population you'll find more of certain types of private schools.
 
It really is a patchwork. Here's a study in constrasts:
 

ORIGINAL: paulaedwina

So in such a muckity system often if you can afford a private school you will at least have small class sizes!

 
She's in PA and it sounds like she has pretty large classes in the public schools...But where I am in NH the elementary class sizes are much lower in our public school. Kindergarten is about 14 kids with one teacher and an aide, grades 1 and 2 are 17-19 kids.  For my son Grades 3 and 4 maxed in 4th grade with 22 kids from a low of 19. Our town has been experiencing rapid growth so they are juggling to keep all of the grades 1-4 classes at 20 or under---with 18 as the ideal. In 5th grade  (middle school) they're grouped with a max of 25. Most of the year was spent with classes of 20 kids.
 
Meanwhile, the closest private school is Catholic and has class sizes of 28-30 starting at 1st grade. Many Catholic schools around here have to maximize the number of kids aying tuition to spread out the costs of running the school and updating aging buildings.
 
Food for thought: a friend's husband was considering an offer from his company to relocate to another state. Part of the compensation package would be tuition to a private school because the local public schools were considered so bad. He has worked in 4 different states for them and this is the only time that offer was made.
 
Re private schools in Canada: don't some provinces/areas subsidize private schools with public tax money? I think my neighbor from Toronto said that if she still lived there she could send her kids to Catholic school and she could ask that her taxes be used to support that school...
 
 

Everything is so much more localized here than in Canada. Here in Pennsylvania, school districts aren't even by county, they're by municipality. So each city, borough, township, has it's own school system. It's a monsterously inefficient way to run things and it ensures that where you live has an ENORMOUS impact on the quality of education you recieve in public schools. Tax revenue doesn't even get averaged over the "good part of town" and the "bad part of town" districts are so small. You're either in a good district or a bad district. Other states do it by county (Maryland, for instance) and there at least things tend to get averaged out a little better between areas of the county with a higher tax base, and those with a lower tax base.

I went to private school almost my whole life. My parents moved to a district that was supposed to be wonderful for me to start 1st grade and not only did it not prove to be so wonderful after all, but after a year of me being there there was a court-ordered desegregation program that forced it to merge with other bordering districts that threw everything in to chaos. I went to private secular schools until high school and then Catholic school (though neither I nor my parents are Christians) for high school. The district we moved to when I was 12 has a school system so bad that the valedictorian's QPA recently was 2.5.

When my husband and I bought a house we made sure we did so inside the Pittsburgh city limits. Pittsburgh doesn't have the world's greatest school system but it does have several charter and magnet schools (which outlying districts are too small to have) so there is a modicum of choice if you don't want to attend your assigned local school.

When we were going to move we used greatschool.net....it was a great resource. We were able to look at test scores, teachers tenure, class size averages, racial makeup, so many things. Then the school's rating as well. We moved to a school that was Recognized, that feeds into a Academically Acceptable Jr High, that feeds into a Recognized High School. We figured for 2 years we'd deal with the AA rating....better than either the Elem. or HS being the low ranked one.
 
I recommend the resource as even just an interesting place to look around. The comments from parents are always interesting! Amazing what some people will complain about...!

It mostly depends on the area. My kids go to the church-funded PK-8th grade school that my husband went to and I am extremely pleased with it. The classes are smaller, the teachers are more involved, and most important - the other parents are more involved. The education level is pretty advanced compared to the public schools, which aren't bad - just not as good. My second grader has had homework nearly every day since first grade. It's nothing difficult, but it does help us develop good study habits. They also really have a good emphasis on performing arts. I was amazed the first time I saw the K-2nd grade play when I saw 8 year-olds stand up on stage and sing solos!

It is a religious school, but they don't get crazy with it. They just incorporate bible stories and some scripture into the lessons. They accept kids of any religion and don't require church attendance. It's nice to have a real Christmas party for the kids, but since it's a fairly conservative Lutheran school, they don't have a "Halloween" party - it's a "Reformation" party and they learn about Martin Luther and have parties wearing non-violent/scary costumes. The tuition is dirt cheap if you are a member of one of the four churches that sponsor the school, and even out-of-parish tuition is less than most people pay for daycare.

The problem in the US is that most school systems are funded by their tax base - made up of people who own their homes/properties/businesses. It pretty much garauntees that suburban schools are best funded and urban and rural schools are not (because of small tax bases).

There is actually a really good chapter in Freakonomics about this. They showed with the Chicago school system that parental involvement was more relavent to success than the school or its budget. The Chicago school system instituted a lottery to allow students to transfer to other schools. By following standardized test scores for kids that entered the lottery and kids that didn't, they determined that kids whose parents simply applied for the transfer did better than kids whose parents didn't apply - even if they didn't get a transfer. It was really fascinating. Changing schools helped some, but not nearly as much as having parents that were concerned and motivated about their kid's education.

I went to private school in Balitmore, Md when I was a child until the second semester of my freshman year in high school. I have to say what a change that was. We moved from Baltimore to Urbana, Illinois. I went from having to be driven to a school miles away daily, to walking to school. The difference in class sizes and school sizes was huge too. Also, the curriculum of the private school was better. I had read much of the books that the public school's AP English class was having them read Freshman year. I was also placed in advanced math and science courses.

BTW, my parents were not affluent. My mother was a stay at home mom and my father was an editor for the newspaper. My parents had monetary help from my grandparents and they went into debt putting my sister and I throuigh private schools. But they had to since the public schools were not very good.

--Sara

There is actually a really good chapter in Freakonomics about this. They showed with the Chicago school system that parental involvement was more relavent to success than the school or its budget. The Chicago school system instituted a lottery to allow students to transfer to other schools. By following standardized test scores for kids that entered the lottery and kids that didn't, they determined that kids whose parents simply applied for the transfer did better than kids whose parents didn't apply - even if they didn't get a transfer. It was really fascinating. Changing schools helped some, but not nearly as much as having parents that were concerned and motivated about their kid's education.

I believe in this 100%.  I went to a private school.  When I started it was a LOT cheaper than it is now, maybe $1500 but now it is about $8000 per year per kid.  The thing is though, our private school tuition has always been LESS than what the government gives the public schools per child, so I cannot believe that our public schools are worse b/c affluent people are going to private schools instead.  It doesn't matter who goes to what school, the truth is that where I live, the public schools get more money from the gov't than the private schools do from their tuition (and NO money from the gov't).  But, when the parents are working 2 jobs each and paying for school out of their pockets, you betcha they are super concerned with the quality of the education and the performance of their children.  My mom always worked when I was a kid and my dad worked and then did snowplowing and/or exterior painting on evenings and weekends to make extra money.  They just made the decision that our education was more important than having a big house, more than one car, and going on elaborate vacations.  My mom served on the PTA for a while and my dad helped out with school events.  They always helped us with homework, especially learning to read and learning multiplication - the two things that I really don't think kids can learn only through being in the classroom.

Now I'm not saying that all public schools are bad and private ones are good.  What I'm saying only applies to my district because our public schools ARE bad and since people don't get to chose which public school and they have control over certain aspects of private education, a lot of families make that choice even when they can't afford it b/c they feel it's the only choice they have.

But, when the parents are working 2 jobs each and paying for school out of their pockets, you betcha they are super concerned with the quality of the education and the performance of their children.

 
I completely agree with this.  My parents weren't wealthy by any means either.  My dad owned his own printing business but it was small (wedding invites, church bulletins, etc.).  My mom worked in the shop once we were all in school.  I know they made many sacrifices to send us all to private school and when I was older, I made sure to tell my dad how much I appreciated it. 
 
I work for a state approved charter school and our students are what we call second-chancers.  They're 18-24 year olds who never graduated and most of them truly fell thru the cracks in the education system.  It's wonderful and amazing to see what they're capable of given the right focus and attention.   Maybe vouchers are the answer and then parents/students could pick the best school and the poor or mediocre schools would either improve of shut down. 

Oh I absolutely agree that parent participation is invaluable and  will make or break a student's ability to succeed. But there are many students who do not have that luxury.
1. They might have parents who themselves did not finish HS and do not have the tools to mentor their own children.
2. Their parents may not speak the language.
3. Their parents might be working a ridiculous number of jobs to keep food in the fridge and a roof over their heads.

For those kids the difference between a suburban school with resources for after school programs, tutoring, extra-curricular, libraries, computers, etc vs an urban or rual school without those things, makes a huge difference. Let us not lose sight of economic disparities having a huge impact.

Paula

But there are many students who do not have that luxury.

 
Paula - I agree with you as well.  Most of our students came from single parent homes, homes where no English was spoken, abusive homes, etc.  Many of them are the first in their family to graduate from high school. 
 

For those kids the difference between a suburban school with resources for after school programs, tutoring, extra-curricular, libraries, computers, etc vs an urban or rual school without those things, makes a huge difference. Let us not lose sight of economic disparities having a huge impact.

 
Perhaps if we had a voucher system, then parents could simply pick the best school, regardless of where they live. 

A lot of money gets eaten up in the "per student" funding for schools by social services in lower SES areas. When your student population needs massive services just to be able to function in a school environment, that money goes pretty darn fast. Meanwhile, while suburban schools may have a similar per-student amount, they have to spend a lot less on the services.

The reserach I do right now is actually in Catholic schools that serve 100% low-SES (socio-economic status) African-American populations. They are kept open by a private foundation and are only loosely affiliated with the Diocese. What you see there is that public or private, that is a very challenging population. You are not going to be hearing about any of these schools on 60 Minutes as Miraculous Success Stories, because they aren't. They have both low funding (ergo no services) AND a very challenging population. It's the perfect storm. A couple do pretty well with what they've got and I would consider sending my own child to. There's one I want to stand out front of and tell every parent that drops off their child there to take their child and run, do not walk, in the other directin, it's so awful. But even the ones that do well, their test scores are not anywhere near similar more traditional Catholic schools (which in this area tend to be pretty good).

We live in Toronto and all 3 of my kids have been in private schools for part of their education. We certainly aren't rich but have put education as a priority over a lot of other things. I have found that close to 50% of private school families are in the same boat financially, many less well off!

In Canada both the public schools and the Catholic schools are publically funded. It goes back to the French/English co-founding nations thing. Every other religious based school is on their own along with the prep schools. Everyone pays education tax that funds the public and Catholic schools. Tuitions for private schools are 100% out of your pocket with NO tax break. The average tuiiton in Ontario is $10 - $15,000/year, +books, +uniforms, +trips etc. Average university tuition $5,000. If you chose to send your child to private school, you are still required to support the public system.

I am a big supporter of private schools. My kids all attended university prep schools in their high school years. My eldest son was very bright, but was totally unmotivated, was truant and after 2 1/2 yr in the public system had 3 credits. The private school he went to was designed for motivating students. Their policy was that all school related discipline (skipping, homework, low marks etc) were dealt with at the school. It gave DH and I an opportunity to rebuild our relationship with our son, without always being on his back about school. In 3 years he was able to graduate with an 82%.

My next son was an excellent student and an over achiever. He went to a different school that stressed 'work hard, then paly hard'. The school required an 80% average or you were out. As a bonus for their hard work they got to go on amazing trips exploring caves in S Car., dirt bike rallies, ski weeks in the Laurentains etc.

The thing I most valued in private schools was the low class (and school) numbers. Math classes usually had 5-8 students. The school knew my kids inside and out. They knew exactly what they were capable of and made sure they achieved it.

All my boys say it was the best education they got - including university. Becuase it is soooo expensive I would personally recommend public school thru elem. then switch for high school.

Perhaps if we had a voucher system, then parents could simply pick the best school, regardless of where they live.

I'd be happy if there was a more equitable funding mechanism for public schools. Just my pet peeve but we have the funds to fight foreign wars, then by golly we should have the funding to at least federally fund public schools. You should stand as good a chance going to a rural school in Misouri as a suburban school in McLean, Virginia. I'm not talking socialism here. Of course wealthy families would be able to provide more for their schools, but there should be a basic needs met accross the board.

JMO
Paula

Thanks Denise.  I'm wondering though, if the schools in TO are still up to a standard.  I mean if your kids were 'normal kids' ( I mean just in the middle of the spectrum not needing to be  pushed or anything) would the public system have worked for them?  You said you second son is an over achiever.  Do you think a public school would have been detrimental to him?  Held him back in any way?

I know that Thunder Bay would probably fit into one square block of TO, so thats why I'm wondering.  Is population a huge factor up here as it seems to be in the states?  I know that Ontario has a high standard for education.  Do you know if it is held down there? Or can it get overlooked in the denser areas?