[Donut Lord]

Originally Posted by S EyeLand

How did this all work out for him in the end? Honest question. I didn't pay attention or try a single time during my entire education. Was able to graduate from a pretty good University and get a job in iBanking. For myself, school didn't matter.

He ended up just getting a GED and going into military for a few years. He was a mechanic in the military then when he left he just went to be a mechanic at I believe a VW shop or dealer.

He married a "crunchy" wife who is super holistic so no birth control or anything like that, so he basically has a new kid every other year. I think he is up to 5 or 6.

[floridaorange]

Originally Posted by Vindicator3

IMO, this is another question to which the only correct answer is "it depends." My HS back in the day and my kids' HS more recently faced that challenge and did so successfully. I'm sure there are some otherwise good schools who don't handle it well for one reason or another. You'll have to dive in and figure out how well your public HS is doing with the issue. I'd be optimistic (given your description of the district), but as you say not naive.

This was the answer I was hoping for but not necessarily expecting. I know they handle it well. It’s just so unknown to me, I’m curious to hear from someone who understand the intricacies how it’s not a massive problem.

[Vindicator3]

I certainly can't claim to understand the intricacies, I'm not an educator or administrator and I wasn't on the inside of how all the secret sauce was made, I'm just a former student at one HS and the parent of a few more former students at another. And I'm sure a huge part of it consists at least of two issues - a) what % of the total student pop comes from more challenging circumstances, and b) how well prepared for the HS are those students.

In my kids' case, we were talking 15-20% of the student population and they were very well prepared as they went to school in the same district K-12 and were not segregated from one another racially or economically (in terms of schools) prior to the HS. Was there the occasional issue of a fight or a racist incident or whatever? Of course, but the school was able to handle it well and as such my kids loved it and the school had and has wide community support and people of all races and wealth levels still move into the district specifically for the schools. But that's one school's story, some other school may have had an even better experience or a much worse experience. "It depends."

[The J-Man]

While I ended up ok, I would have been substantially better off with a private school. I was always in gifted and talented programs which public schools do a poor job of. By the time I was in middle school, the gifted and talented programs became alienating because I was always being pulled away from class to go special places and work on special projects. So I rebelled and refused to do any more. I just wanted to stay in normal class and feel like a normal kid. Therefore my education in high school suffered. If I had been in a private school with like minded peers of above average intelligence, I would have been much better off in high school and going into college.

Public schools cater to the lowest common denominator. It doesn’t matter how highly the school is rated. If your kids are smarter than average, you’re doing them a disservice with public school.

[XutvJet]

The folks I personally know that were homeschooled are some of the brightest, most personable people I know. Homeschooling doesn't mean you won't have a social life. It's just a little more difficult to find it, but a good parent will figure it out for their child. All the parents I know that homeschooled were very good and involved parents.

We live in a good school district in the southwest suburbs of Kansas City. My wife and I attended the same school district my children attend/attended (not the same schools though). There are some not so great teachers, but overall, the elementary, middle, and high school teachers have been average to excellent. Our kiddos are excellent students (4.0+ and taking AP courses) and my wife has always been quite involved with school through PTA, sports, etc. It certainly helps us get a feel for who's a good teacher, teacher opinions, who's who at the school, etc.

Being in KS, Christianity is STRONG and very large and wealthy Catholic schools are EVERYWHERE. Many kids go to them even though they live in excellent school districts. I was raised Catholic and we could afford to send our kids to those schools, but for us, the private schools are just too damn white and many of the rules are downright silly. We want our kids to go schools where there are other races and a wide range of income levels. The private school kids tend to live a pretty sheltered life being surrounded by lots of privileged white kids except for maybe a handful of black boys there on a sports scholarships (at least that's the case in Kansas City). I certainly don't think they're more well behaved because the private school kids tend to be pretty freaking wild (hardcore drugs, sex, heavy partying) as they have the money and many have parents that are uninvolved, oblivious, and/or lax. It was that way when I was growing up and it's that way now. It's not to say that stuff doesn't happen at our public schools (my wife and I certainly did our share), but at private schools, it's another level of wild.

I get going to a private school if you live in a crap school district, but I certainly don't think you're getting as much as being advertised, much less the cost. As a parent, it is part of your job to help them with school and it is your child's job to take it seriously and do their best. Many parents put way too much pressure on schools and teachers when often times it's the disconnected/lax/uninvolved parents that are the problem. If your kid is a shithead, there's a strong likelihood you're the reason why.

[Maynard]

Originally Posted by XutvJet

......I certainly don't think they're more well behaved because the private school kids tend to be pretty freaking wild (hardcore drugs, sex, heavy partying) as they have the money and many have parents that are uninvolved, oblivious, and/or lax. It was that way when I was growing up and it's that way now. It's not to say that stuff doesn't happen at our public schools (my wife and I certainly did our share), but at private schools, it's another level of wild. ....

This is very true, and a major downside of those upscale schools, both private and public (our local wonderkids from the best district in the city just made national news for some extreme hazing). Money and legal invulnerability lead to a LOT of very dangerous options.

[Vindicator3]

Originally Posted by The J-Man

gifted and talented programs which public schools do a poor job of.

While I'm not taking any issue at all with your description of your experience at your school, I disagree that this generalization can be applied across the board (or that the flip side that private schools handle such kids better is true across the board).

If your child requires such a program, there will certainly be public schools that aren't properly equipped, and private schools that are, and maybe the odds are better that a really elite private school will be, but there are certainly public schools who do a great job with this and don't just cater to the LCD, and there are certainly private schools that don't. You will have to look at the particular schools in question to figure that out.

[Vindicator3]

Originally Posted by XutvJet

We want our kids to go schools where there are other races and a wide range of income levels.

This is now going back a few decades but my step-mom tells the story of putting her oldest in school for the first time, when she and her first husband were in Galveston, TX for a couple of years. She was checking out one private school and she asked the lady how many Hispanic students they had. The lady paused for a minute to try and interpret the question and came back with "Oh, you won't have that problem at our school."

Scratch that one off the list...

[noemon]

In my opinion, kids should only be in a public school unless they need extra attention(.ie falling behind) in which case they can either go into a private school or get private tuition to catch up.

Homeschooling I would never consider.

School is not just about learning the ABC but also about social interactions. Home schooling negates that and private schooling limits the scope of social interaction to a specific group of people that tend to be shitty by default.

[Manny01]

Lots of good content above, so I’ll try not to be duplicative.

There’s an extremely high correlation between academic achievement and parental IQ, income, wealth, employment, relationship strength, etc. that is independent of where and how a child is educated. Said differently, good research shows it’s doesn’t really matter where your kids go to school if your parents are smart, in a healthy relationship, and have money.

Something to consider.

[spazzyfry123]

Originally Posted by noemon

...School is not just about learning the ABC but also about social interactions. Home schooling negates that and private schooling limits the scope of social interaction to a specific group of people that tend to be shitty by default.

This was always a concern of mine. However, actively homeschooling, I'd argue that the kiddos actually get a wider band of social interaction. They are engaged in a ton of different groups, activities, exploring tasks in an applied and interactive way with frequent "field trips." I was public school and I turned out fine I suppose. But I was a part of a small group with a small graduating class. While I cherish the bond built with my small group, I was exposed to the same small group of people day in and day out for a dozen years. My kids seemingly interact with many different people every week and are a part of way more "things" than I was as a kid.

Homeschooling isn't just sitting at the kitchen table by themselves doing a math problem.

[XutvJet]

Originally Posted by noemon

Homeschooling I would never consider.

School is not just about learning the ABC but also about social interactions. Home schooling negates that and private schooling limits the scope of social interaction to a specific group of people that tend to be shitty by default.

It's really on the parents to find those social interactions for their homeschooled kiddos. Most homeschool programs offer social activities with other homeschooled kids. Our school districts allow homeschooled kids to play on the middle school and high school teams so as long as they are playing for the school district they live in. Homeschooled kids are also free to play club sports and do plenty of other activities, of course.

As I noted earlier, some of the most well-rounded, polite, outgoing, and just plain nice people that I know were homeschooled. There's a girl on my daughter's club volleyball team that's homeschooled. Sweetest girl and the same goes for her younger brothers and sisters. The parents are great too. They have have money and simply choose to homeschool.

[noemon]

Originally Posted by spazzyfry123

This was always a concern of mine. However, actively homeschooling, I'd argue that the kiddos actually get a wider band of social interaction. They are engaged in a ton of different groups, activities, exploring tasks in an applied and interactive way with frequent "field trips." I was public school and I turned out fine I suppose. But I was a part of a small group with a small graduating class. While I cherish the bond built with my small group, I was exposed to the same small group of people day in and day out for a dozen years. My kids seemingly interact with many different people every week and are a part of way more "things" than I was as a kid.

Homeschooling isn't just sitting at the kitchen table by themselves doing a math problem.

In Europe we do not really have a home-schooling ecosystem and in most countries it is outright illegal for parents to fail to register their kids with a public or private school.

I went to a public school also but had private tuition at home for math and physics. I applied the same system to my 3 kids(all three of them get the same private tuition at our home in math, physics and piano), except for my daughter who has also been in a private school for the past 6 years. We have now collectively decided that she will go to the boys public school next year as she herself asked, she is 11 but going 21.

I understand that for some locations(aka catchment areas) public school is not an option.

[Vindicator3]

Originally Posted by XutvJet

Our school districts allow homeschooled kids to play on the middle school and high school teams so as long as they are playing for the school district they live in.

Same here. Very small sample size, but a couple of mine were on a team with a home-schooled kid and her brother was on another team one year older. They were two accomplished kids.

Originally Posted by Vindicator3

In public schools, even if you are in excellent district that has overcome all the normal challenges to achieving that status, you have to be alert (these days anyway) for stealth or not-so-stealth attempts to take over the school board by folks with a variety of fringe political agendas, usually in some combination of anti-vax and/or book banning (or removing everything in the curriculum to which even one parent objects) and/or trying to dumb down the curriculum with "PragerU" type nonsense.

Updating my own point here, there were widespread reports over the last few weeks of book-banners getting voted off of local boards to which they'd been elected, in multiple states. Maybe this trend has peaked?

BUT, some of that nonsense can also sneak in at the state level (OK example below). Though at that level I assume it applies to all schools so, unlike at the school board level, this danger is not a differentiator between public and private schools., just a differentiator between one state and another.

https://www.koco.com/article/oklahom...lters/64623287

[floridaorange]

This has been pretty helpful - so do private schools not give students more of a professional environment? I feel like thats a big part of what youre paying for - a professional looking campus and faculty especially if thete are uniforms. Do you see what kids wear to school these days? Pajamas, yeezy slides… i guess this may matter on a case by case basis. But for some boys especially I could see how a more disciplined environment could foster more of a serious approach or at least be surrounded by a higher ratio of professionalism.

What am I missing..

[XutvJet]

Originally Posted by floridaorange

This has been pretty helpful - so do private schools not give students more of a professional environment? I feel like thats a big part of what youre paying for - a professional looking campus and faculty especially if thete are uniforms. Do you see what kids wear to school these days? Pajamas, yeezy slides… i guess this may matter on a case by case basis. But for some boys especially I could see how a more disciplined environment could foster more of a serious approach or at least be surrounded by a higher ratio of professionalism.

What am I missing..

The only thing that has changed is us. We're getting older and the older crowd tends to think they were the best generation and that kids these days are out of control, dress like crap, etc.

When I was in middle school back in the late 1980s, girls wore super short mini-skirts, tight fitting Guess jeans, tube tops, bangs to the moon, etc. A couple of girls would wear big shirts and a belt, effectively making the bottom of the shirt into a skirt. The guys either looked like unkept skaters or were super preppy. This was a middle school one of the best public school districts in the nation at the time. HS in the 1990s was all about frumpiness and grunge for the most part.

On the flip side, I was raised Catholic and had lots of friends that went to expensive Catholic schools with dress codes, fancy facilities, excellent sports (because the recruited kids and gave out scholarships). The only minorities there were because of sports. Overall, that crowd tended to be wilder than us. They partied hard, drank lot, more teenage sex, and WAY MORE drug usage (only ones I knew that did coke).

My daughter is a sophomore in the same public school district I attended. Yes, the kids can dress like crap, but we did too. She also has many friends in Catholic schools as many of the girls on her club VB team go to private schools. Same old stuff. More partying, wilder, etc. with the private school kids. They're also pretty damn sheltered and so are their parents. These are the types of people spooked by anything in society that doesn't present itself as "suburbia", if you catch my drift.

So yes, I would undoubtedly say that private schools likely have a more "professional" atmosphere and the education can be a bit better. But it is also a very controlled atmosphere on many levels, tends not to be very diverse, and you kid can exposed to the same stuff the public school kids are and in some instances, more of it.

My daughter (and son who's now in college), have/had 4.5+ GPAs in HS because there are so many AP/honors classes available. My son graduated with 12 hours of transferrable college credit under his belt and my daughter will have the same. The catholic schools do offer some AP courses, but not remotely as many. The private schools also tend to have far fewer elective course options. My son spent half of his junior and senior school days at an off-site specialty school that is part of our district where he took coding, cyber security, and game design courses. My daughter will do the same the next two years taking culinary courses in one hell of professional/restaurant kitchen environment. Most of our public school districts have similar off-site school options. Nothing of the such exists with the private schools around here.

[Vindicator3]

Again, I would say you can't generalize too much. Some private schools have uniforms, some don't. I guess you can generalize and say that public schools don't have uniforms at all (except perhaps for some charter schools?). Some private schools are full of rich kids with too much time and money on their hands and so "party drugs" and the like are worse than at public schools, some not. And so on.

1000 years ago when I was in HS I certainly didn't dress "professionally," but I tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to be trendy-ish enough to not be a complete dork, not turn the girls off too much, etc., so I wasn't a total slob. In college, OTOH, I was all about comfort. Shorts and t-shirts when it was warm, jeans or sweat pants with sweatshirts when it was cold. Screw The Man if he thought I looked like a slob.

That college look is, of course, my true self, and I'll get back to it 7 days a week as soon as I retire, barring occasional spousal pressure to the contrary.