[larrys]

"Oddly enough, many of these private schools with low pay have much higher performance than the surrounding public institutions."

Not odd at all because if you look at the student body it tends to be quite homogenous at a private school vs public (where anybody can attend) so much of this makes sense. Everybody at the private school can either afford it (and comes from a highly motivated family who pays and obviously cares about education) or is given a scholarship (and is also highly motivated). The school has the stick of being able to kick people out if they act up or disturb the other students.

I went to a private school but my sisters didn't want to go and went to the local public school. I also remember at least one person who started in my class and returned to the local public school. They preferred to socialize and have many friends (private school class in total was quite small).

I think many people (who haven't attended a good school whether it be college or high school) fail to realize the big advantage of being around a group of people who are enjoying the experience and essentially want to be there (not that there wouldn't be some people who would rather not and were forced to but they were in the minority from my experience)