Public schools often fail miserably at both of your stated goals. When people here talk about their school experiences, it's usually a story of stupefying boredom unless some teacher notices them and spends a lot of time with them. When I think of public schools, I think of mediocrity.
You're also underestimating just how bad a public school teacher can be. I've talked with LAUSD students and I have heard some crazy stuff. You can usually at least be sure the parents give some kind of shit about the kids...
Others in this thread have mentioned the damage done by public school "socialization", so I'll only point out that my socialization while home schooled was much better than when I was public schooled. It was plenty diverse, if that's what you're worried about. Your point about "you're really in a private school" is a classic no-true-scotsman and you should feel bad.
You said exactly what I've always thought about public school but could never put into words. I've found, though, that private school avoids some of these problems by filtering out problem kids and keeping class sizes small. Kids can be made to be friends with each other(at least to some extent), but many of them don't have that guidance
The advantage of public school isn't that the socialization is super high quality, but that it's going to be broader spectrum than pretty much any alternative.
It's not about getting your kids to form the best relationships possible, it's about teaching them to be comfortable with and learn to handle a huge swathe of people that are different from themselves.
And, possibly more importantly than that, it's about teaching kids to do this without the immediate presence of their parents.
Are public schools a perfectly diverse cross section of the population? Of course not. Are they a whole lot closer than very nearly any private school or home school? Absolutely.
This is something I am seriously considering, though I will need to change careers to really enable it. Looking at public schools locally (I'm in San Francisco), it seems that the student quality is quite poor. Lots of class disruption and poor performance on tests.
My belief is that holding students to high standards and placing them with other kids who value those high standards results in very capable children, who are capable of making moral judgments and being good people. Poor education means that you have to rely on rule-based morality, etc.
It looks like this lack of good education mostly falls on poorer families, so they're forced to homeschool. I think, for me, private school is going to hit the right cost/benefit since there is a huge opportunity cost to me giving up my job.
Ultimately, all this appears to be the result of the fact that school administration in SF seems to be primarily populated by people who could not do very well in school or university and consequently have poor logical skills and cannot administer well. Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdekUXyAAzI . I think I exceeded these administrators' skillset and reading comprehension at 12 years of age. You likely did too (you think I am arrogant, perhaps, but watch the video).
These people are too dangerous to be involved anywhere near schoolchildren because the risk is they may take you and turn you stupid like them. The danger is net negative utility, where a sufficiently motivated child could probably solo much of this material from the textbooks. If private schools were easier to set up, I would set up a micro-school right away, just so there is some social contact.
Still, I have a few years before this is a constraint.
I guess I just don't think you've made a good case for _why_ the private school teachers are better than the public school teachers. I don't think it's intrinsic motivation. Do you really think status is a sufficient explanation? Why aren't public schools getting our best and brightest?
It's not that I think I have bullet proof answers to these questions, but I feel like you're not acknowledging that these are important questions to answer if we're to understand why your children are getting a better education in private schools.
My theory is that it largely has to do with teachers prefering to teach the subset of children who get into private schools. As a rule, private school kids are better behaved and less difficult to work with. It's important to note that I'm not saying public school children deserve an inferior education. Their lack of behavioral and emotional skills is not their fault. In fact, those are skills that should be taught in school.
So I think you hit the nail on the head for why public schools are generally awful. It’s precisely because they’re public. The public is full of dysfunctional families and homes with severe issues and people with terrible values. The kids bring these problems to school and the school has to spend considerable resources on them. And we’re supposed to want to surround our kids with this?
Unfortunately I know first hand having had to go to these schools until my parents finally realized their worldview was damaging their children.
Saying that, public schools in communities of stable homes with caring parents with good values tend to be just fine. They still have to deal with issues a private school won’t tolerate but they’re mainly functional.
The other aspect is that private schools are self-selecting first and selective second. Your kid either needs to be well behaved or fiendishly rich (enough to offset their problems with benefits for everyone). This isn’t the case in public - as it takes everyone as they are.
The reasons I’ve considered private school for my future children after talking to friends/parents who have put theirs in private has less to do with the quality of education but more to do with the peers they’ll have. They’ll likely be around decently behaved peers and I’ll be able to shape the discussion of how the school is run - whereas that’s not the case at public schools at all.
Having come from such poor schools where we couldn’t even afford five days a week education and only went 3-4 days/week, I know my kids will get an exceptional education compared to what I got - but I want them to have a good social life too and maybe that’ll work at a public school but maybe it’ll work at a private instead.
It probably depends a lot on your high school and teachers. I had a unique high school experience in that I went to public school for two years and private school for two. The private school did a much better job of teaching those nuances, and challenged me 10x more than public school ever did. That probably says as much about the public school as the private school though, which just helps to support my point that we could be doing better.
I'm a private school teacher; my kids attend the school I teach at. Some random thoughts:
* First, there's enormous variation in private schools. A whole lot of sectarian schools are utter crap and worse than public schools when you control for the neighborhoods they're in.
* But there are also a lot of private schools with significant structural advantages: students who want to be there with systemic support from all families and faculty who just want to see how far they can run in a supportive environment.
* I teach in a crazily idyllic environment. There's been no fights in literally decades. It's cool to be a nerd or a jock. It's happy and green. I am sad that this is such an exception and not the rule.
* I have the utmost respect for public school teachers. I'm well aware, in many ways, that my job is "easy mode" for education. I think it's great that we have a diverse system, and having the public system exist and able to provide a quality education to people of all backgrounds is an essential public good.
* My children are mathy, somewhat introverted kids. Being able to pick an educational environment where they're expected to present often, do drama and the arts, etc, has made them grow into much broader individuals than they would in other places. This kind of choice doesn't often exist in the public school system.
Here is the problem with public school – it seems that it is an anti-intellectual place. I was bullied quite a lot in school (I was skinny, academically inclined and have extremely bad eye sight).
It seems that bullies single out people who do well academically to bully. In a lot of public schools, it seems that the focus is more on sport (and other activities) than education. In some public schools, teachers are lazy – due to the lack of performance evaluation and strong unions.
I marked one of my own record exams because the teacher was too lazy to mark it himself. He was angry at me because I insisted to have the subject in higher grade (he pushed everyone to take standard grade so that he doesn’t have to compose two tests).
Certainly, a private school would be better. But parents should have the choice on how their children are schooled (whether in private school, home school or religious school). It seems that every group wants children to be schooled in their public schools to teach them their ideology. This is BS.
The government should be forced to give vouchers to people who send their children to private school (instead of forcing to pay twice for education if they don’t want the mediocre government education).
This is still just one data point. Can you compare your public HS experience to your private HS experience? Can you compare public school A to public school B? Private A to private B?
A school being private doesn't magically make it great. It has to still work hard for that. A public school being good requires hard work too. But let's be honest, usually it boils down to parent involvement which is usually fueled by economic status. Rich(er) people have time and/or resources to actually be involved in their kids lives. They also tend to have fewer kids so more time/resources per kid. The initial thing a private school does these days is pool the rich(er) cohort of kids together.
I live in a part of my city known as the 'private school corridor' because there are so many. And, the public schools are notoriously horrible in the city's ISD. So, it's pretty much required if you have the means. The other alternative is to move to a suburb (different ISD), but even those are pretty easily seen as correlating good school districts with high home prices. Yet, I've seen studies in my area that say if everyone sent their private schooled kids to the public schools they would average out and be pretty well rated. But it's a first mover disadvantage to do so, so nobody does.
I also live in the south and this whole private school thing really started during integration, so there's that whole issue to contend with too. The impacts of red lining and white flight are pretty stark here. I don't think it's the motivating factor for most people any more, but inertia.
This is why our public schools have stats like "5% white" and "86% low income" on Great Schools. 5% white seems really low, the city is ~56% based on another google search.
That's sad to hear. BTW, my post wasn't intended to argue for private schooling in general but more that teachers matter. There are some truly wonderful public school teachers. The problem is if you're not lucky enough to live in the right area of the right district at the right time, there's not much you can do about it except opt out.
In switching from private to public in California schools, I had a similar experience. Grade 3 was private, grade 4 public. There was little learning happening in grade 4, but my grade 5 teacher at a public school was one of the best influences in my life.
I think individual attention is the single biggest factor. An experienced and observant teacher will find something in a pupil to drive their interest and enthusiasm. If one teacher has 40 kids to teach, that amount of attention is simply not possible.
This is a good point. "Private" encompasses a wide variety of experiences and quality. My private experience with my kid is of the somewhat elitist variety. They simply would not accept expelled students from any school. They heavily curate enrollment to create an environment for success. They're building a cooperative community of Families that will reinforce the holistic development of each student. Parental involvement is required and with fairly high expectations.
If you just throw kids together and expect the syllabus/curriculum to prevail, you'll quickly find the Lord of the Flies elements of public school social dynamics come into play and for a child often are more important than academics. At that point, simply being "private" has no advantage.
If a private school can provide a superior education to non-disruptive children, and public schools continue to provide the same education to disruptive children, isn't that a good thing?
Your comment is self-contradictory. You say the problem is low teacher pay and status, but then point out the private school teachers aren't highly paid, but are motivated.
If I were to speculate, I suspect the differences are:
1. Modestly higher pay in the private school, attracting better teachers
2. More selective student body in the private school, making the school environment more conducive to learning for average and above-average students, and more attractive to teachers
3. No public-sector union in the private school, leading to more accountability for teachers
The second point is important. Private schools exclude all the kids whose parents lack the motivation, time, or resources to place their child in an exclusive institution. They exclude the children who didn't learn the behavioral skills to conform to the expectations of a private school. They exclude many children with disabilities even if they can't explicitly discriminate. Meanwhile, public schools are required to include children with disabilities (often involving disruptive behavior) in class with other students to the extent practical.
Public schools are charged with upholding the social contract that all children are entitled to a Free Appropriate Public Education regardless of their social status, wealth, disability, or the financial or emotional capacity of their parents. It's a heavy burden to carry, but it's one that we as a society have decided is worth the cost. Your children's private school doesn't carry that burden.
You're missing the point. The purpose of public school is to provide a basic education. If you want to do more work, or your parents want you to study more, you're free to do so.
In your very own example, you went to a private school and did well. That's great, that's what's supposed to happen. What's currently happening in public schools is that too many resources are being allocated to the over achievers and not enough to the under achievers. There's not enough money to fund all programs, so you have to ensure you fund the most needy first.
I realize this advice may be appropriate for some people, but speaking personally as a parent who is both lucky enough and financially fortunate enough to send both of my girls to a private school, I think it's misguided for them. The school they go through is K-12, diverse, and the high school portion of it is pretty amazing. I'm personal friends with several of the teachers and I can say with all honesty that the classes they teach are easily the equal of the most interesting college courses I took at a very well regarded university. Obviously I haven't sampled every single class, and I'm sure there are some duds, but I've sampled enough to feel like I have a pretty good feel for it. It would be a huge mistake for my kids to forego the opportunity to learn more about the world with those teachers.
Private and home schooled kids consistently outperform public schools by a GIANT margin. The quality of education, by say a Montessori school, compared to public is drastically different; from building self esteem, independence, critical thinking, creativity, socialization, etc.
Public schools, are derived from the Prussian system, its optimized to create obedient workers, its the lowest common denominator in education.
Arguements of equality in public schools are out the window too when you compare the funding and quality between poor counties and wealthy ones.
Its especially unjust that parents paying for private education pay twice, for public and private.
You're also underestimating just how bad a public school teacher can be. I've talked with LAUSD students and I have heard some crazy stuff. You can usually at least be sure the parents give some kind of shit about the kids...
Others in this thread have mentioned the damage done by public school "socialization", so I'll only point out that my socialization while home schooled was much better than when I was public schooled. It was plenty diverse, if that's what you're worried about. Your point about "you're really in a private school" is a classic no-true-scotsman and you should feel bad.
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