Ok, as interesting as I find this whole topic, the almost 80 odd comments are starting to feel kind of…pushy? You all have some strong feelings. I get that.
At the end of the day, though, Mr. A and I are going to have to muddle through this and figure out what we think based on our own experiences and the schools that are actually available to us. We have decided the following:
(archived here for later personal reference)
A) We can actually afford to send M to private school in 1st grade IF we decide we want to. We can do this by keeping our spending the same, banking Mr. A’s raises for the next two years, and finding a job I can do part-time once M is in kindergarten or 1st grade. The realization that made this prospect especially attractive is the possibility of finding a part-time Chinese speaking caregiver for L. That way, the arrangement would benefit her too. If my job offered any kind of benefits at all, we would save anywhere from $6,000 to $12,000 a year over what they cost at Mr. A’s job. I am also only comfortable with private school if we have a full year’s tuition in the bank before M begins in case I get laid off or something (very likely with nonprofit jobs, especially part time ones). By the time L needs private school tuition, Mr. A will be in a much better place financially at his job.
B) We are going to go to the next open house that the Girls’ School offers. Just to check it out. I am not interested at all in the co-ed school private school options. If we are going co-ed, we can do that for free.
I busted out an old copy of “Failing at Fairness: How Schools Cheat Girls” and had horrible flashbacks to my school days. Let’s just say I could rant for about an hour about the unfair allocation of funds just for sports at my old school, never mind the subtle and not so subtle sexism that was prevelent on a day to day basis in the classroom. Title nine, my ass. Now I remember why Women’s Studies was such a revelation when I was 18.
C) I want my kid’s school to treat us like customers. We are paying good money for our children’s education (whether it is taxes or tuition). The product they are selling me is a good education for my kids and I am a damn savvy consumer. I can tell if my kids are getting the attention and challenge they deserve. I have no problem with the school being run like a business if the product I am getting is satisfactory.
D) True to all stereotypes, Mr. A is most concerned about college admissions. If the private school can provide an 11% better chance of getting into Columbia, then he thinks it is a good investment (though he is still not sold on elementary school). Why he chose Columbia, I will never know. I have no desire to send my poor innocent Midwestern girls into NYC at age 18. Berkeley, yes. I will happily send them to the California hippies, but Columbia wouldn’t be on my list. Mr. A was scarred for life because he was rejected by Brown as an undergrad, so I am surprised he didn’t say Brown.
As an aside, the only experience I have with the Girls’ School is with a guidance counselor. When I was in high school, someone suggested my mom hire the GC from the Girls’ School to advise me about colleges. In retrospect, she had some really great suggestions. She pushed for an all-women’s school and for many other schools I never would have considered. In the end, though, the lack of preparation at my own high school and fear I couldn’t compete pushed me to make the choice for the local Big State University. Without that two hour meeting with the GC, I probably wouldn’t have recieved the full scholarship she encouraged me to pursue. That was well worth whatever my mom paid, for sure.
E) Selfishly, it would probably be a lot more fun if my kids went to the local school. We would probably make more friends with the other parents.
F) I am tired of thinking about this, since there is nothing to decide for at least another year and a half.
G) One last thing. Homeschooling? Hahahahahahaha!
Seriously, NO. These kids need to GO. TO. School. No way I would sign up to be fully responsible for their education. I would go insane. There was a good reason why it took us a full year to do only 80 lessons in the learning to read book…it was because I didn’t like sitting down for 10 minutes a day. I am sure it is great for other people, but not for me. I would much rather work to pay for their schooling. Hell, I would work at McDonalds if it meant I didn’t have to homeschool. No thank you very much.
One thought about the private school. If you are interested in class size, PIN THEM DOWN on the absolute highest number they are willing to go for a class. As much as I like our parochial school, the numbers have jumped dramatically in class size for some of the grades.
Does that mean I can send my son to a coed school w/out fear he will be cheated?
Hey, Brown rejected me, too!
[That's all I got left for this conversation. No, wait: I'm with you when it comes to homeschooling. Go To School, Small Children!]
A) that sounds really smart. i can tell you people have your shit together.
B) amen on the fairness issue! i think i told you about the confidence i see in girls who graduate from the girls school. it’s amazing.
C) you will definitely be treated like a customer, and a good paying one, at that.
D) i hate to tell you, but simply attending a certain school will not increase your child’s chance to attend an elite private college. it’s a combination of college guidance (that’s what they call gc) competency, and where other girls in her class choose to attend college. fyi.
G) i’m with you 100%!!!!!!
Good luck with your decision, I’m sure you’ll figure out what to do when the time comes and it’ll be the best decision for your family. I read all the posts at once and don’t have time to check the comments — I hope I didn’t miss much
Hee! You forgot the part about “Some of my best friends are homeschoolers!” lol.
The bit about how the GC at the Girls School is very powerful. I’m a homeschooler, but the idea of a GC like that makes a lot of things clear to me. — who knew such a thing existed?
And is anyone else thinking about The OC, and how Seth (I LOVE Seth!!) was rejected from Brown?
dear “the person” — I interview for my Ivy League alma mater, and you are not correct. Sorry. Quality of college guidance is part and parcel of where you go to school, including the history of a particular high school’s relationship with Ivy admissions offices.
That said, I have been very impressed with graduates of all-girl high schools and the ones I have seen have an amazing track record at getting in to great colleges.
I just thought of another pro for all-girls school – at least my school. You would not believe how much they keep in contact with the alums. And yes I do realize that they do very well collecting contributions from the alums. But – something major happens in my life and I hear from them. When I got home from China I got a monogrammed bib in the mail. My grandmother died and they made a donation in her name. I have to say that the interest they take in our lives is pretty impressive – just a nice community feeling.
I also hear you on the home schooling. Huge responsibility. Scares the crap out of me. I applaud those that can do it and do it well.
I just (like, two months ago) graduated high school – it was a private school, and my parents had pretty much the same dilema you did, being very much lefty-leaning liberal parents with social consciounces who really didn’t want to put me and my sister in private school, but then our local high school started to slide and I was being bullied mercilessly and the options were rather limitted. So, private school it was.
My only reservation with private school would be the single-sex aspect, actually. (I went to a co-ed). Several of my closest friends are guys and I wouldn’t want to have missed that opertunity to meat and get to know those funny, smart, kind and intelligent human beings. That being said, there were a lot of male idiots, too. (There were also a lot of female idiots). This could just be my area, but all the girls only or boys only schools in our city (and there are a LOT of private-ed schools around here) have a reputation for being very snobby, very elitist and very out-dated and conservative. The girls schools in particular seem to be shedding girls at a rate of knots into co-ed schools (ours got a LOT of girls from a neighbouring single-sex school) because the bullying there was aweful. A couple of my friends who went there complained that it was very clique-y and fostered a great deal of elitism.
But private school, sad as it is to say, really does help kids get into decent universities.
That said, A) these are just the ones in our area; B)private school, no matter how wrong this is, really will give kids a leg-up in the world, particularly if they are already bright to begin with (I hold up my own and my sister’s exam results, as well as the number of universities I was given unconditional offers to study at when I applied) C) if you think single-sex education is right for your daughters, then it’s right for your daughters. I mean, I’m only offering up my experiance and views, which really have no bareing here. Good luck with your decision!
Ok, I have a feeling this might not sit well with Mr. A (sorry Mr. A!) but I do not think it really matters a great deal what college you attend (except for perhaps a few career areas), but more what you DO while you are there. I went to a second-tier university, but took part in the honors program, got to work closely with a faculty mentor on his research, got almost straight A’s, won a Fulbright Fellowship after graduation, and got into an extremely competitive Ph.D. program. I do not make a huge salary (maybe this is what is different about going to an elite college?) but other than that, I don’t think things would have been any different for me if I had gone to an Ivy-ish college.
My point being: I don’t think the argument that private schools give kids a better chance to get into an elite college is all that useful, for the reasons cited above.
And……now I’ll shut up.
Whether going to an Ivy or other super competitive school is important is a different discussion (and even farther removed from M and L at their current ages).
I think that there are huge differences among private schools too. In quality of education and (correlated, but not absolutely correlated) rate of acceptances to certain colleges.
By the way, I went to public school. The students who had gone to the better private schools and the elite (eg Stuyvesant, New Trier) public schools were a year or two ahead of most of the public school students in science, math, language placements and just general study skills. The students who had gone to so-so private schools were no better off.
My DH was also rejected by Brown but he seems to have survived without too much of a scar!lol He’s done preliminary interviews for the Ivy he did go to for many years and while it’s true that the overall assessment is about the individual, some schools are simply better at preparing kids for university than others and some schools do have reputations as feeder schools. Even if our kids weren’t in private for the primary years, if I could afford it and found the right fit, my preference would probably be for a private school for the high school years. Did you ever think as a parent that schooling would consume you to this degree??lol
Julie
I think you guys are doing such a great job of thinking this stuff through. It seems like you are really considering all the angles.
And remember that
1. this isn’t your iron-clad decision forever. If something isn’t working for M, you can always change it
2. She is a smart kid, and she is going to turn out just fine. Furthermore, you are not parents who will just leave her to languish in boredom and misery. Even if you wind up with the public school, and she is not wildly stimulated by her classes there, you’ll make sure she gets to develop her intellectual capacities in other ways.
Go Am-Fam!
I am all for the all-girls school! take out the “boy” factor and I am sure there would be a whole lot less drama in high school. I went to an almost all-girls college (at the time 90% girls though I think they were all in my major math/comp sci). It was a great experience.
It’s interesting that you think you can be a savvy customer of education for your children and that you will be able to tell if M is being appropriately challenged.
I don’t feel that way at all, and I’m super-educated myself (and I guess even an educator). I find it quite difficult to determine what the developmentally appropriate level of challenge is for my kids (and tend to both over and undershoot with some regularity). The first thing I appreciated from my preschool was that the teachers showed me that some things (like putting on their shoes) could be perfectly well expected from my children. Now, my 1st grader to be is reading harry potter books (and asking to read the Twilight vampire series — I turned her down), and I’m hoping for input about that, too, from her teachers.
bj
I will not presume to get into the co-ed vs. single sex issue since I feel strongly that is up to each family to determine, but I would like to make three suggestions:
1. get tuition insurance – all private schools offer it and it is a god send if someone loses a job etc…
2. I would not approach the school with the attitude of: “I am paying good money, etc…” I think it is better for you and your kids if you approach it from the positive perspective such as: “We chose this school because we believe that you will be offering our girls the best education for their minds and hearts…” etc… A lot of how we are perceived as parents has to do with how we approach the teachers and administrators of the schools we choose for our kids whether they be public or private and I have done both for two very different kids with happy results all the way.
3. You can be aggravated for free (public schools) or you can be aggravated for an additional high fee (private schools). I promise you there will be things that upset you no matter what. Do not expect perfection. It is not like purchasing a designer dress and returning it when the zipper breaks. You should expect the best effort for your child of course no matter what, and sometimes that will be public and sometimes private – it really depends on so many complex factors as I am sure you know! Good luck with your decision. It is one of the most complex you will get to make about your kids over their “childhood”.
Late to the party, but for what it’s worth, I loved my girls’ Catholic high school. I’d send my daughters there tomorrow if it was located in my city.