[buwka]

I think a better term may be those trying to “justify” their school choice. After their home one of the next largest choices, both financially and as a parent, is where to educate your children. Paying 50,000 a year and people will definitely justify it after the fact. Just because you have the disposable income doesn’t mean you should only like at private schools because that’s the expected thing to do.

[mlyle]

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.

[buwka]

This description reminds me of my public school. My point is that there's enormous variation in both private schools and public schools. I think there should be more nuanced terms for public schools than lumping them all together.

In high school I described my public school as faux-public given that the school district was dependent on local property values (yes, definition of public school) while support from the state was negligible to the overall budget.

In the four years I was there we had maybe a fight (more of a tussle) about once a year, our football team won a game about every two years, and our science olympiad or other extra curriculum program placed nationally every year. If students were working on projects it wasn't surprising if the teacher left to make photocopies or do other things while we worked. In terms of outcomes, in my math/hard sciences about 75% attended ivies. There are many great private schools in the area but given that they have the same test scores (while being able to choose their student body) and same college outcomes I would not recommend discrediting a school simply because it is public

[actfrench]

There's a huge variety in private and public schools, but it's rare that the school is not 9-3pm or 8-6pm. A few exceptions like Fusion Academy do 1-1 tutoring. We need a more modular approach to education that's not all teaching kids the same curriculum during an uninterrupted block of hours. .

[actfrench]

I think that most parents make decisions out of fear, rather than what they really think is best. A friend of mine used to work at Noodle and said that they did a study there which showed that most parent's primary reason for choosing an elite private schcool is for their own networking purposes, rather than the quality of their child's education. I have not seen that to be true in the parents I've met who send their kids to private school, but it's still striking.

[buwka]

Schooling, whether private or public, is so universal that there's endless different cases and motivations. The area I grew up in this was definitely a contributing factor. A lot of families sent their children to the same private school, belonged to the same country club, summered in the same places, and attended the same religious organizations. They were all culture aspects that fit together for this particular community. This can quickly lead to people spending their lives only ever in one extremely privileged bubble.