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Are private schools really better than public schools?

late said:
Some of the old ones are superb.

But there is a lot of good and bad in the ones built in the last half century, not really all that different from public schools.

We need to get serious about education, and there is a simple truth. The countries with great education systems have either federal schools or federal control.
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Canada does not have have federal control of education either but we still get very good education scores far better than the US and some European countries.

Also interestingly at least in Quebec there are public schools that get to choose their students, those schools are considered on par or better than even the most elite private schools, being able to choose students affects a lot.
 
Carjosse said:
Canada does not have have federal control of education either but we still get very good education scores far better than the US and some European countries.

Also interestingly at least in Quebec there are public schools that get to choose their students, those schools are considered on par or better than even the most elite private schools, being able to choose students affects a lot.
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Canadians are too polite to screw other Canadians as many ways as they can think up.

Which is what we do...

If it works for you, that's great. But we have local control, and we'll keep getting worse until we either get federal schools, or some dystopian future where 90% of the people are dirt poor.
 
PirateMk1 said:
After 45+years on the planet I more than sufficient knowledge and experience to provide a very well rounded and effective collection of tools for the tool box. Just my business knowledge is more than enough for them to succeed. That said the education that is provided is a mix of specialized tutors, hands on experience through various endeavors paid and not, and extensive reading. The children in my clan are taught to read as early as possible basically as soon as they can speak. We encourage voracious reading appetites. We make daily life the school and its in 24/7, everything is a learning experience. Which is how its supposed to be. The only reason they even set foot in a school is for sports and academic completion and make them suffer a year of high school. Going to high school is NOT for academic purpose. Believe me for them its torture. :) We deliberately send them to a crappy school, so they can see close up why they are lucky and what being poor is actually is. They realize that just because its easy for you it aint so much for others as they didnt start at the same line or have the same rigors. They come out of it with some new friends and better appreciation of what they have and can do. When we are done they can go to any college or start their own business and succeed. They dont fear change and challenge. We make sure that Murphy and Life has had their way with them, and they dont come into young adulthood with the know everything syndrome. They can compete with the 1% and win easily. Because thats what they have been doing essentially their entire lives. We dont breed sheep in my clan or sheep dogs or even wolves. We educate our women and men to be the TOP of the food chain, and kneel to no one but those they choose.
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I believe that you only think you do. No one know everything no matter how many years they live. Most are like Ben Carson, great in one area, but not so good everywhere else. It's a mistaken belief you hold according to my 60 years of experience. :coffeepap
 
Boo Radley said:
I believe that you only think you do. No one know everything no matter how many years they live. Most are like Ben Carson, great in one area, but not so good everywhere else. It's a mistaken belief you hold according to my 60 years of experience. :coffeepap
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You read what I wrote. You have your own conclusions. I have mine. I want my children to have the best education possible. I dont get that in a public or even a private school.
 
Thank God for private schools.

In the 1950s, I was scheduled to enter a public high school that (even back then) had a large percentage of young gentlemen who exhibited poor behavior.

Fortunately, my parents had the money to send me to a private school, which was attended by children of many wealthy and/or famous parents.


If I had been forced to attend that public school, I might not have gotten out alive.

Parents have a duty to make sure that their children attend a school where teachers can teach, not spend all their time just trying to maintain order.
 
PirateMk1 said:
You read what I wrote. You have your own conclusions. I have mine. I want my children to have the best education possible. I dont get that in a public or even a private school.
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You have the right to do that, but that doesn't make you right.
 
Helix said:
the solution that i prefer is a redesign of the public schools that are failing.
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I'm not so sure that it is the schools that are failing, maybe it is the parents (family unit) that is failing. Yes, there have been a handful of success stories with taking an inner city school, imposing very strict rules including uniforms, and transforming it to a near average performing school, but when these models have been applied to other schools, they have often failed. The parents have to be behind the children and behind the school. they have to be supportive of education, value education, realize that education can bring their children a better life, they have to actually care about children, and provide a home life that allows their children to focus on school.

One of my wife's relatives taught elementary school at an average performing school for decades, then she moved to a lower performing school. She said that at first she was really excited because she thought the students were learning, eventually she realized that the very next day many of the students had lost total recollection of the prior days "learning". She believes that there is something very wrong with many of these children, as if they were crack babies or something. They actually weren't learning, they were just temporarally able to repeat the material that had been presented to them minutes before. the next day it was gone. She believes that there is something very wrong with many of these children, as if they were crack babies or something.
 
late said:
We're still 13th and falling. We don't have a long way to go before educational achievement is down with the non-developed countries.

You can't have a good economy with a minority that's properly educated. England tried that, a long time ago, and we ate their lunch.
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I'm a strong believer in education, but maybe we aren't falling in the rankings because our education system is getting worse, maybe it's just getting better in other countries. Maybe we are doing about as well as we possibly can, considering our demographics. I've read that if we break down our population into different ethno demographic groups, we are at the top or near the top of the world for every group. Children of european decent in America are at the top or near the top for all children of european decent worldwide, asian decent is the same way, middle eastern and african decent is the same way.

Are any of the countries above us more demographically diversified that the US?
 
American said:
TRANSLATION: Private schools are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy better.
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The only way you could come to that conclusion is if those 12 countries that are ahead of us have an extensive private school system. They don't.

I'm not saying that private schools aren't better, you just can't reach that conclusion based on our 13th place world wide ranking in education.
 
TheParser said:
Thank God for private schools.

In the 1950s, I was scheduled to enter a public high school that (even back then) had a large percentage of young gentlemen who exhibited poor behavior.

Fortunately, my parents had the money to send me to a private school, which was attended by children of many wealthy and/or famous parents.


If I had been forced to attend that public school, I might not have gotten out alive.

Parents have a duty to make sure that their children attend a school where teachers can teach, not spend all their time just trying to maintain order.
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Wow, so what percentage of students who attended that public school were killed in school before they graduated?:doh
 
imagep said:
The only way you could come to that conclusion is if those 12 countries that are ahead of us have an extensive private school system. They don't.

I'm not saying that private schools aren't better, you just can't reach that conclusion based on our 13th place world wide ranking in education.
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You assume homogeneous school systems, performance and demographics. That's not the case, so all we can do is compare to ourselves. They're public schools are probably better than ours, because we play politics and tie tons of money to school lunch programs and other stupid insanity like that.
 
This is purely on an anecdotal level, NOT on an empirical level, but I will say that yes private schools are resoundingly better than public schools.

The students in my small town high school came from three different grade schools. One was a private Lutheran school (where I came from), one was a private Catholic school, and one was a public school. There were MANY times during my high school days where I was frustrated with how little the public school kids knew compared to the Lutheran and Catholic private school kids... The public school kids never diagrammed a sentence before (I did so in like 5th grade already)... Same thing with learning how to write checks... Same thing with learning basic fractions... same thing with learning what nouns/verbs/adjectives/adverbs/etc. are... In short, those public school kids were absolutely CLUELESS about things which I already learned in depth during my grade school days... A lot of it was just repeat material for me... There was a VERY DISTINCT difference in knowledge/comprehension levels between the Lutheran/Catholic private school kids vs the public school kids...


The first day of one of my college courses I was handed a fraction sheet showing how fractions worked (as compared to a whole)... I was insulted because I learned that all in like 3rd grade... The sad thing is that there were many classmates of mine who had no idea how that very basic stuff worked...


If all public schools are really THAT bad, it's beyond embarrassing...
 
gfm7175 said:
This is purely on an anecdotal level, NOT on an empirical level, but I will say that yes private schools are resoundingly better than public schools.

The students in my small town high school came from three different grade schools. One was a private Lutheran school (where I came from), one was a private Catholic school, and one was a public school. There were MANY times during my high school days where I was frustrated with how little the public school kids knew compared to the Lutheran and Catholic private school kids... The public school kids never diagrammed a sentence before (I did so in like 5th grade already)... Same thing with learning how to write checks... Same thing with learning basic fractions... same thing with learning what nouns/verbs/adjectives/adverbs/etc. are... In short, those public school kids were absolutely CLUELESS about things which I already learned in depth during my grade school days... A lot of it was just repeat material for me... There was a VERY DISTINCT difference in knowledge/comprehension levels between the Lutheran/Catholic private school kids vs the public school kids...


The first day of one of my college courses I was handed a fraction sheet showing how fractions worked (as compared to a whole)... I was insulted because I learned that all in like 3rd grade... The sad thing is that there were many classmates of mine who had no idea how that very basic stuff worked...


If all public schools are really THAT bad, it's beyond embarrassing...
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So do you think that the methodology at the private school you attended was better, or was it the students (and their families) at the private school who were more academically inclined?

The thing with this debate is to figure out whether private schools have some sort of better teaching methods. If they do, then it seems that public schools would simply copy those methods and greatly improve. I have limited knowledge of this, but I feel that there is no real difference in methodology.

Sure, if you can afford you child to go to a private school, that child may be better off because he/she is surrounded by better students and that may tend to "rub off" on your child, or at least there may be fewer disruptions in the classroom, which would also benefit your child. But if ALL students were to attend private schools, then private schools would no longer have the "good student" advantage and I doubt that overall student performance would increase.
 
imagep said:
So do you think that the methodology at the private school you attended was better, or was it the students (and their families) at the private school who were more academically inclined?

The thing with this debate is to figure out whether private schools have some sort of better teaching methods. If they do, then it seems that public schools would simply copy those methods and greatly improve. I have limited knowledge of this, but I feel that there is no real difference in methodology.

Sure, if you can afford you child to go to a private school, that child may be better off because he/she is surrounded by better students and that may tend to "rub off" on your child, or at least there may be fewer disruptions in the classroom, which would also benefit your child. But if ALL students were to attend private schools, then private schools would no longer have the "good student" advantage and I doubt that overall student performance would increase.
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Interesting question... I actually want to say that both things seemed to be the case. I feel like I learned (and retained) more from my private grade school than I did from my public high school (as in, I was taught things in a more "common-sense" and practical way instead of having Marxist propaganda shoved down my throat). That seemingly allowed for students (such as myself) to be more "academically inclined". I got sick of school by the time my last few years of HS rolled around (and only went to college to get an associates degree in my field of work) most likely because I got sick of the teachers' propaganda and how distanced the coursework was from any sort of real life practical usage...
 
gfm7175 said:
Interesting question... I actually want to say that both things seemed to be the case. I feel like I learned (and retained) more from my private grade school than I did from my public high school (as in, I was taught things in a more "common-sense" and practical way instead of having Marxist propaganda shoved down my throat). That seemingly allowed for students (such as myself) to be more "academically inclined". I got sick of school by the time my last few years of HS rolled around (and only went to college to get an associates degree in my field of work) most likely because I got sick of the teachers' propaganda and how distanced the coursework was from any sort of real life practical usage...
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I thought that was the case to then you get the more advanced business courses and you see the practical application of the advanced math classes.
 
"Better" is a subjective term. One could say that since private school attendance is consensual, it is automatically better for that aspect alone. The real test of which is better would be if they made paying for public school consensual as well. I think you'd see people flock to a free market of private schools, and a withering to death of public schools if that were ever to happen.
 
gfm7175 said:
Interesting question... I actually want to say that both things seemed to be the case. I feel like I learned (and retained) more from my private grade school than I did from my public high school (as in, I was taught things in a more "common-sense" and practical way instead of having Marxist propaganda shoved down my throat). That seemingly allowed for students (such as myself) to be more "academically inclined". I got sick of school by the time my last few years of HS rolled around (and only went to college to get an associates degree in my field of work) most likely because I got sick of the teachers' propaganda and how distanced the coursework was from any sort of real life practical usage...
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Your educational experience differs a lot from mine. I never once, not in public grade school or college, felt that I had a teacher who showed any type of political bias, or who taught any particular political ideology. I suppose that things are different in different areas though.

However, it's also not surprising that government employees tend value government services more than private sector employees.
 
gfm7175 said:
The first day of one of my college courses I was handed a fraction sheet showing how fractions worked (as compared to a whole)... I was insulted because I learned that all in like 3rd grade... The sad thing is that there were many classmates of mine who had no idea how that very basic stuff worked...


If all public schools are really THAT bad, it's beyond embarrassing...
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I should add that these classmates who didn't know how fractions worked were ACCOUNTING students... They were FUTURE ACCOUNTANTS...

:eek:uch:
 
Anarchon said:
"Better" is a subjective term. One could say that since private school attendance is consensual, it is automatically better for that aspect alone. The real test of which is better would be if they made paying for public school consensual as well. I think you'd see people flock to a free market of private schools, and a withering to death of public schools if that were ever to happen.
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I think you would see a lot more home schooled children. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it may result in an even lower labor force participation rate, and higher prices due to shortages of lower paid workers (I am assuming that higher paid workers would be more likely to continue working and pay for private school) - if that matters any.

I don't know that government operated private schools (which is effectively what our current public schools would become) would really die off though. Private schools would likely jack up their prices to keep the public riff-raff students out, which may leave the government schools as the lower priced alternative for middle class and lower middle class students. I suppose students from poor families would just have to remain ignorant, unless they were able to get some sort of a scholarship.

Plus, I don't see a lot of private schools being able to afford facilities to match our current public schools. Talking about things like 10,000 seat stadiums with artificial turf covered fields, arena style basketball courts, multiple science labs individualized for every particular science field, vocational schools, etc. It would take $150-250 million dollars in startup funds to compete in facilities with a large modern high school (we are building two new high schools in our county right now, totally cost approaching $400 million dollars). Not a lot of private schools can come up with that type of dough.

Also, there is a lot of economy of scale in operating one large school, as opposed to a dozen tiny schools.
 
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gfm7175 said:
I should add that these classmates who didn't know how fractions worked were ACCOUNTING students... They were FUTURE ACCOUNTANTS...

:eek:uch:
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I have to admit that is pretty pathetic.

I didn't bother to take any math my last two years of high school, so I took a pre-calculus course during the summer immediately after graduating high school to prepare me for what I think is real college level math (starts with calculus). My pre-cal class pretty much covered all the math that we should have learned in grade school, but probably didn't really learn.

I think Eng 101 & 102 are sort of the same thing, all the English language skills and literature comprehension skills that we probably should have learned in high school - but didn't.
 
imagep said:
Your educational experience differs a lot from mine. I never once, not in public grade school or college, felt that I had a teacher who showed any type of political bias, or who taught any particular political ideology. I suppose that things are different in different areas though.
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If so, then you're quite lucky... I mean, my Lutheran private school is obviously biased towards, well, Lutheranism haha... But my parents paid extra money (from their own pocket) for that type of upbringing. My public high school education was done by teachers who let their "left-wing" biases show, and their biases towards The Big Bang Theory show... Except for one teacher who I for the life of me couldn't figure out where he fell on the political spectrum. THAT'S the way education SHOULD be done...

But my college teachers (except for possibly one or two of my accounting/business teachers) were all hard core "left-wingers" and weren't ashamed to show it... One of my non-accounting related classes was literally just going through various "logical fallacies" and they always used anti-Christian examples, and many of their examples weren't even actual logical fallacies to begin with... My college Economics teacher on the very first day ranted about how much he hated the textbook because it was written by a "right-wing" economist. College for me was pure indoctrination attempts. I obviously did not fall for that indoctrination BS.
 
imagep said:
I think you would see a lot more home schooled children. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it may result in an even lower labor force participation rate, and higher prices due to shortages of lower paid workers (I am assuming that higher paid workers would be more likely to continue working and pay for private school) - if that matters any.

I don't know that government operated private schools (which is effectively what our current public schools would become) would really die off though. Private schools would likely jack up their prices to keep the public riff-raff students out, which may leave the government schools as the lower priced alternative for middle class and lower middle class students. I suppose students from poor families would just have to remain ignorant, unless they were able to get some sort of a scholarship.

Plus, I don't see a lot of private schools being able to afford facilities to match our current public schools. Talking about things like 10,000 seat stadiums with artificial turf covered fields, arena style basketball courts, multiple science labs individualized for every particular science field, vocational schools, etc. It would take $150-250 million dollars in startup funds to compete in facilities with a large modern high school (we are building two new high schools in our county right now, totally cost approaching $400 million dollars). Not a lot of private schools can come up with that type of dough.

Also, there is a lot of economy of scale in operating one large school, as opposed to a dozen tiny schools.
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We will never know, because your government will never allow it to be consensual. I suspect that is for a reason.
 
imagep said:
1) I'm a strong believer in education, but maybe we aren't falling in the rankings because our education system is getting worse, maybe it's just getting better in other countries.

2) Maybe we are doing about as well as we possibly can, considering our demographics.
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1) Both.

2) That's an excuse for not doing better. Intellectually, this isn't all that hard. We could build the best public education system in the world.

Politically, it's impossible. But that's our crazy politics, not the imagined limitations of minorities.

We need to think of people as assets to be cultivated, not liabilities.
 
late said:
We're still 13th and falling. We don't have a long way to go before educational achievement is down with the non-developed countries.

You can't have a good economy with a minority that's properly educated. England tried that, a long time ago, and we ate their lunch.
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There was a time when a fellow of $200M in net worth would have made the Forbes 400. Now, one having $1B in net worth won't make that same list.

So it is with scholastic performance. As less-developed nations become increasingly more developed, they begin to catch up to developed nations in a progression of areas, education being among the ones on which developing nations focus somewhat sooner than other infrastructural elements and ASAP, even if it's not the first aspect on which they focus. Sooner or later, therefore, developed nations must either "step up" their commitments -- pragmatic and pedagogical -- to scholasticism (and the citizenry's competence therewith) or acquiesce to being in that dimension superseded by aspirationally assertive developing and developed nations.


Anecdotally, in light of the pervasiveness of several seeming norms in U.S. culture and among the citizenry, I'd be not surprised to find the U.S. is yielding its relative scholastic primacy, regardless of the development status of the nations besting it. Among the anecdotal norms I've observed are:
Although I cannot accept as fact your assertion the U.S.' is "13th and falling," and I know better than to use my anecdotal observations to support it, were I to find it's so, I wouldn't be amazed.

Does any of that credibly bolster the assertion that between public or private schools, one better educates students than does the other? No.
 
imagep said:
Your educational experience differs a lot from mine. I never once, not in public grade school or college, felt that I had a teacher who showed any type of political bias, or who taught any particular political ideology. I suppose that things are different in different areas though.

However, it's also not surprising that government employees tend value government services more than private sector employees.
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Red:
I attended Episcopal schools, so I can't honest say that, for my teachers had a clear bias in some of my theology classes. Of course, inculcating in us bias toward Episcopalian catechism was the point of those particular classes. Naturally, certain other theology classes had no such goal; those classes had unbiased presentations.

Outside of theology, however, the only bias I observed was that for rigorous thought and good ideas and against sloopy cognition and insipid notions.
 
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