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Minor Deity |
https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...indefensible/618078/ That Atlantic op-ed is on moneyed private K-12 schools. It’s like different world and the author is not charitable towards these schools and the parents of the kids who attend these schools.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
That's quite an article. How does a high school teacher afford putting her kid in a $50K per year private school?
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| Pinta & the Santa Maria Has Achieved Nirvana  |
Well, there are private schools and there are private schools. The ones mentioned here--the elite of the elite in NYC, LA, are not typical of "private schools" in any but the largest metro areas. People put their kids into private school for a variety of reasons, but I'd say for most it's religious (think Catholic school education) or lack of a decent public school alternative in terms of safety or educational rigor. To be honest, these types of articles always bug me. They're very eastern urban centric (with the occasional not to LA, DC or SF), and then they make all these conclusions about private schools based on a tiny sample of the very top of the pyramid. Folks who send their kids to Dalton (and I know a few) know exactly what they're getting--security, education and access to top tier colleges. Your run of the mill parent sending their kid to a run of the mill private (not an oxymoron) is being deluded if they think they are going to convert that $200K tuition into an Ivy League admission. | |||
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Minor Deity |
Steve, the article (and my private research on an independent schools comparison site*) show that financial aid - conditional on the student's acceptance - is common in such schools nowadays. If that was indeed the author's total income, I doubt he would have been obliged to pay anything. *Boarding schools are still more expensive, and serve a similar clientele. https://www.boardingschoolreview.com/
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
It isn't just private schools. This type of nonsense goes on in highly competitive public schools, too. Parents are the same everywhere, and this is what our society has become. | |||
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| czarina Has Achieved Nirvana  |
From the article: "The numbers are even more astonishing when you consider that they’re not distributed evenly across the country’s more than 1,600 independent schools but are concentrated in the most exclusive ones—and these are our focus here." These places disgust me. Think of how these families could raise the quality of public schools if their precious terrors had to attend.
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Minor Deity |
As someone who attended private schools grades 6 through 12’ and taught in a grade 9-12 prep school for 12 years, I have seen the value of them, including class size, access to AP classes, vastly better college counseling, music and art programs... Most private schools nowadays have extensive scholarships for families that can’t afford the cost. Jf
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| Minor Deity |
By teaching in a private school. Many offer free tuition for faculty kids. Jd
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| Unrepentant Dork Gadfly  |
A friend of mine teaches in a very exclusive private school (in California, lots of celeb kids, they were the centre of a highly publicized scandal last year when they turned their prom into a “protest” so they could still have it). Anyways, his daughter attends because she gets free tuition. He couldn’t afford it in a million years.
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| Minor Deity |
I think the practice of free tuition for faculty kids is almost universal. Jf
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| Does This Avatar Make My Butt Look Big? Minor Deity  |
The wealthy have safer cars, safer neighborhoods, better health care, and better food. Why would education be different? And no, these schools won’t guarantee your kid admission to an exclusive college. The parents need cold, hard cash in the millions for that. | |||
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| Minor Deity |
Just read the article., and I will skip my inclination to spend the rest of the day responding. Two points: The “problem” such as it is seems to be some of the parents rather than the schools themselves. The prep school where I taught made a concerted effort to counsel parents and students from day one that our college counseling was about finding a college that was a good fit rather than “the best” college. This was almost universally accepted. Michael Thompson, the author and consultant mentioned in the article, worked closely with this school and his wife was our school psychologist for a number of years. I am all for making public schools better. The solution is not to close the private schools or, as the author suggests, somehow prohibit or limit parent donations to private schools. Jf
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| Minor Deity |
That is but one of several paths. My three kids went to public schools, their parents were hardly rich, and all three got into what I would consider an exclusive college, two of them early admission. Jf
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
As our society is constructed (and I’m not suggesting it should be constructed differently), you are absolutely right. The difference is the way the power that comes with that money is being used. Parents are interfering in schools on a micro level (arguing for their own child) in ways that didn’t happen when we were younger. There was, in my personal experience, greater respect for school authority. | |||
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Minor Deity |
The parental problem is also omnipresent in public schools, particularly in better districts. There was nothing in that article as far as parents that my daughter did not experience teaching in a public high school. The article is class envy, no more.
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