<p>I find the kids who go to boarding school, which my kids did/do (no great privates around here, though famous publics), are very ready to go to college, to take responsibility for themselves, and a lot less likely to get the “I"M OUT OF MY PARENT’S HOUSE” crazies their first year.</p>
<p>My daughter was very ready for college, since that’s the original question, and transitioned quite easily. YMMV</p>
<p>The numbers below represent 2008 NM Semifinalists from the Dallas Morning News</p>
<p>24 St. Marks of Texas (private)
24 Paschal High (Fort Worth ISD)
24 Plano East (Plano ISD)
23 Hockaday (private)</p>
<p>19 Flower Mound High School (Lewisville ISD)
18 Highland Park (Highland Park ISD)
13 Cistercian (private)
10 Greenhill (private)</p>
<p>I think a Greenhill graduating class is slightly over 100 students. Hockaday is in that range. The St Marks class of 2007 had 87 students. I think the 2008 class was approximately the same number.</p>
<p>This doesn’t tell the whole story but gives one basis for comparison. I know that during my son’s time on the St Marks math team, there were several strong males on the Greenhill team.</p>
<p>MOWC–recall that the 2003 St Marks suicide came in July after the 13 yo girl at Greenhill committed suicide (also using a gun) in the bathroom after school. One of the grief counselors told me that BB had really fixated on that event.</p>
<p>Good info. Thanks.</p>
<p>Not any more…in the early 90s it was close but they had a mass exodus of really excellent long time teachers (at all levels) under the previous headmaster, and replaced them with young, less credentialed many of whom could also coach…while SMS or Hock will do a nationwide search to look for science and math teachers GH replaces them with recent college grads…their AP science classes are a joke. They have lowered admission standards to favor those who can help build their endowment.</p>
<p>In the mid 90s both schools had similar numbers of NMS winners…even though GH has about 30 more students in the class. Since then, SMS annually has 20-30 per year (not counting commended) in classes of about 85 and GH has 7-10 in classes of 120…</p>
<p>I could give you more examples…but would take them off line.</p>
<p>I would also put Cistercian up there with SMS and Hock but with the caveat that it is so small and has such a rigid curriculum. I put GH in that second tier along with ESD, Ursuline and Jesuit…then everybody else.</p>
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<p>Nope, not remotely southern…from one of the most liberal bastions in what used to be the golden state. Since there are 1600 young men and I do not wear a name tag most will not know my surname. ‘Ma’am’ does not insult me in the least…I much prefer it to the often used- yo, um, hey, or foot shuffling without eye contact. I am however of European descent and to this day still address my parents friends as Mr. and Mrs.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, the elite private HS near us is harder then our local public HS. Every class is similar to a honors class. </p>
<p>Until recently, we sent our children to private religious schools. This was very important to me. I think our experience is similar to other parents from that school, since they have a high turn over of students and teachers. Our negative experiences only relates to that particular school.</p>
<p>^ I certainly agree with the perception of widely differing experiences at religious schools. That can be true even within the same region/city: some can be barely better, or no better, than the least-performing public; others can be on a par with the best performing independent privates. Really depends on the staff and on the administration’s priorities when it comes to standards, hiring practices, recruitment efforts, previous attainment of student body. </p>
<p>(Disclosure: my children went to private religious schools, but we were choosing only among 3 of the best performing in that category for elementary, and similarly --3-- for secondary. We did a fair amount of research and visiting to determine this. My children were both rather well prepared for demanding college environments. Recent alums visiting as college freshmen unanimously reported – at all 3 high schools – that college was “easier” than their high schools had been, and they were certainly not attending colleges that anyone here would describe as ‘easy.’) Much better to be “over”-prepared, if that can even be said. :)</p>
<p>Arguing the merits of one school over another based on student outcomes, is of course as dubious as what we do to evaluate colleges. </p>
<p>Some schools, compared to others, attract students from more priviledged and enriched backgrounds, students whose parents strongly value education, and those schools will select the more talented/brightest/motivated students. So great students at ‘great school x’ may have thrived as effectively in many other ‘lesser’ school environments as well (just as the evidence shows to be true for colleges). </p>
<p>Simply, this is not an experiment that ensures comparable students assigned to ‘school x’ and ‘school y’. The differences in students or student outcomes may reflect existing differences about students and their lives, rather than anything the school “does for” the student. </p>
<p>Moreover, while I think our personal experiences may be useful, I think most of us can rationalize anything. Earlier on I could explain the value of where our kids go to school and why we pay the tuition we do. But frankly, what is my real basis of comparison? Maybe my kids would have been just as fine at a public, something I will never know. </p>
<p>For those who have seen their kids in different environments they are in a much stronger position to compare, but even then, it is usually comparing a child or two at 2 schools, which may not at all generalize across to other kids nor to other schools in their respective categories.</p>
<p>Is it not obvious? a private school accepts a skilled student while a public school accepts the whole community. Only a special student can get into a private while a dumb kid can’t get into private he goes public. A private education has better teachers and better students who are surrounded by motivated peers. They don’t call them private for nothing they perform at superior levels, they’re guaranteed to get your child in college unlike public. If you wan’t your child to take education seriously & become well rounded then they should be in private. A private schools overall mission is “College”. I can’t say all public is bad but majority is it just depends on the income of the area when determining a good public school, for example a rich area will have a newer Highschool and just better facility while a poorer area/mixed area/african american area will have underperfoming highschools. I’m just stating facts dont take it personal i came from a majority black highschool and i can tell the different and i researched the stats/scores/Gpa’s/Sats. The best candidate comes from Privates or high income Public schools and top colleges know this they know the ranks of your schools.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure what evidence you may be referring to for K-12 “lesser” schools, starbright, regardless of what has or has not been shown to be true for colleges. It certainly is not true that great students in lousy k-12 academic environments in my region do “as well” as when placed in environments much more stimulating, with peers who are more comparable to themselves, with curriculum and materials more suited to their abilities.</p>
<p>I also need to say that there has been a dramatic change in my own region within the last 15 years. Fewer and fewer are there public schools which can compete academically with good privates. Or I should say, the number of cities where one can exchange one for the other, is decreasing, which is rather alarming. IOW, there are some quite wealthy cities, even, which now no longer have the same outstanding public school sites (even one) which they used to, and for which families had previously moved Heaven and Earth to move there, specifically for those public schools.</p>
<p>This may not be true in other locales. I only speak for my own, and I hope this is not an epidemic nationwide, because compromised public education affects us all. I went into the field because of my commitment to public schools. Regretfully, by the time I myself had children, I could not have enrolled my own students there without unacceptable compromise to my own academic standards.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that some private schools offer more positives than some publics. But the proof of that argument is not in citing how many NMF students the school produces. The fact is that an elite private school is very selective at the point of admission of the students. From the day they arrive on campus, it is predictable that the overall “stats” of these students upon graduation will surpass the overall “stats” of the graduating class at a public school. There will be overlaps between the two populations. But the private school will have a higher concentration of these types of high performing students because they only accept such students from day one. I would expect them to have MORE students with high test scores than the public school which has some students of that caliber but also has other kinds of students in overall student body as they take everyone. So, the “stats” of graduates at private schools doesn’t mean much to me as a basis of arguing that the private schools are better preparing kids or some such.</p>
<p>^ nor am I arguing that, although perhaps some other posters are arguing based on outcomes. My argument is with regard to what occurs within the 4 walls of these schools. The only thing to note is that having a critical mass of ambitious & capable students affects the performance of other students. In schools where that is absent, that will make a difference. For example, an AP course will not be offered at a public school for one student; not going to happen in my state, anyway. Also, there will be an expectation of what the class as a whole is capable of doing, and that is the curriculum that the one or very few students will be consigned to.</p>
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<p>It wasn’t evidence. I was referring to an abstract idea, where one can fill in ‘lesser’ however they want to. Thus in my case it might be that kids at our local top private vs. those at local public (that private school parents view as lesser). I was referring to many of the choices we parents on this forum have choosing between whether school A and B was best for their kid in a given neighborhood (a choice that many do not have I should add). Cuttng across neighborhoods and the huge disparity in resources and such, well that is a different issue. </p>
<p>I was simply trying to shine a light on the folly of arguing in this thread that private is better than public based on things like personal experience of one school, or stats of where Intel winners come from, since we are never able to control for child quality, parents, family environment etc. Hard to get anywhere near cause and effect here without randomization of student to each environment. Never going to happen of course. </p>
<p>But be clear, I wasn’t trying to reach a conclusion that this means public education quality isn’t in decline and that this is not a serious issue in this country. We are in the same camp on this, the gap only grows wider. And I apologize for being so confusing. But to me the gap is far far greater between neighborhoods than within them.</p>
<p>My Boston friend just called to let me know his DD accepted to Middlesex. Older child in a well-known private. Even tho the public schools in his area are very good, they still cannot compare to the fabulous privates in his area.</p>
<p>i’m jealous. In my area, the 3 private schools are great in individual attention, small classes, but… For example, the math teacher in the local private asked me if the worm got a 5 on AP math, and if his friends did. No one in her school got above a 4. There were some great students at each school, but would the worm have been friends with them? If the school is 50 minutes away, would he have friends outside of school?</p>
<p>Academically, it seemed better to let the worm take APs and classes at the local U, and leave after junior year. Had we lived in Boston, there would have been good and better options. </p>
<p>I won’t bore you all with tales of woe, e. g. his fundamentalistic teacher, who made kids wear t-shirts with their religious symbol on it for a day (Teacher had a hard time with atheists–I thinked they flunked on principle.) I have enormous respect for the good teachers.</p>
<p>epiphany, sorry, I was not clear that my post was not responding to YOUR post but rather to some other posts citing NMF numbers. </p>
<p>I already acknowledged that there are some advantages or plusses at SOME privates compared to SOME publics. My point is that backing that up using number of NMF students isn’t the proof. It’s some of the other stuff that may be advantageous, and not so much stats of their graduates who are selected at the point of entering the private school.</p>
<p>^No need to apologize. 
I assumed you weren’t referring to my posts necessarily, yet I did want to clarify some important aspects about the effects of poorly performing schools on previously well-performing students. I’m glad that many do have choices in this regard; when a good education becomes a scarcity, the competition for private education ramps up to unreal levels, and it also leaves the public options without the benefits of a core student body to maintain a positive influence and attract other achieving students to it. (You think the competition for HYP is bad? You should see what it can be when there are 2 or 3 well-performing privates vs. 15 horribly performing publics. We’re not talking “4 freshman classes of equally capable students.” We’re talking 10 times the number of well-prepared kindergarteners, or 9th graders, for available spots.)</p>
<p>Adding…While, the school my daughter would have attended is not the top private HS in this area it does have a great record of sending kids to top colleges. I wanted to simply point out that may not be the only reason to send a student there. We do have a friend that sends her son because he can double up on his science classes and be in small classes. But, he really doesn’t have any friends. He sees it as a means to the end. A very bright mature young man. My daughter didn’t want to be in a school that was so small. She was thrilled to be in public school and move between groups of kids. With a small group of kids the friendships can be limited. You have what you have. For my friend’s son it doesn’t matter. For my daughter it did. Perhaps, she would have more attention in small classes. She was surprised to meet kids who simply didn’t care in public HS. But, for some parents there is a bigger picture. Some would laugh to find my area described as diverse, but when one compares it to the private small religious schools she attended - it is.</p>
<p>My kids went to a public HS rated one of the best in our bottom of the rankings state, so perhaps I can generalize it as ‘good’ ? The school is large enough so that students find their niche. My kids were the band/debate crowd; others become science nerds, gothics, druggies, jocks, party animals – truly a wide spectrum one might also see at a public university. So my first observation is that parents hoping to control/redirect their kids may find the public school offers more distractions and rope.</p>
<p>Both of my children are 4.5+ GPA, NMS, National AP scholars … blah blah blah. For parents who think this means something about the student, I can say one child found herself adequately challenged in science but not in english/writing, while the other child became a dual HS/Uni student from Junior year and had a full plate of homework that required discipline (read: daily study) to maintain good grades.</p>
<p>Both of my kids write reasonably well so far as mechanics is concerned, but neither are top notch critical thinkers and their essays tend to be structured ok but the reasoning is not rigorous. Like other parents have written, I view this area as the weakest in my kids education thus far. Unless a student is a natural writer and thinker, an American public HS is unlikely to turn out a thoughtful, coherent, and concise writer. That takes years of daily practice, and public HS is not up to the task for the most part.</p>
<p>Just as students find their niche, so do parents. My wife in particular was in a social group of parents very involved in their kid’s schooling, and it was well known within that group where teaching excellence existed. Our public middle-school had excellent English, while the public HS had excellent math and chemistry. In retrospect I should have supplemented their education with extra-curricular literature and writing since neither child was particularly self-motivated to do so themselves.</p>
<p>Last comment, re: standardized testing. The kids are subjected to a large amount of idiotic, time wasting ‘assessment’ and preparation but not of the type that leads to high SAT scores, and it is most certainly academically useless at best. Directed P/SAT prep and test practice did not exist. If the parent/student cares about these tests venues outside the school are required. We took advantage of practice books during summer vacation, and I tutored as needed.</p>
<p>Bottom line: students, parents, and schools all have their strengths and weaknesses. ‘Fit’ often is used to mean whether a student is comfortable, but it also means matching aptitudes, interests, and priorities.</p>
<p>“a private school accepts a skilled student while a public school accepts the whole community.”</p>
<p>In my area most of the private schools are burdened by problem children sent to them by parents willing to pay to have the school ‘help’ the student. These kids are in public schools too, of course; but I suspect they are over-represented at many of the privates. Sometimes the problem is drugs, and the parents hope more discipline and oversight is present at the private, but at least from stories I hear the more common situation is a student with learning disabilities or psychological problems.</p>
<p>A sweeping generalization that privates harbor only the best and brightest is clearly way off-target from reality.</p>