Are private schools always "better" than public schools?
Private schools are not always better than public schools. I know plenty of public schools that are better than some private schools, and I know plenty of private schools that are better than some public schools. Thinking about a private school, A, it's still about match, it's still about is this school a good fit for my child. But private schools, are, they're largely unregulated. Almost anyone can start a private school, and they don't have, they don't have to follow the same accountability rules that public schools do. So you can have a fabulous private school, and there are schools here that if I could send my kids to them on scholarships I would do it in a heart beat because I know that they would get a world class education. There are other private schools that I wouldn't send my child to if they would pay me to go, because the standards for their teachers are lower, the class sizes are higher, the curriculum to me sometimes seems a little iffy or a little “fringe-ish,” so you definitely, absolutely want to go and check out a private school very carefully. And especially if they're not accredited or if they're really new you want to be especially critical of them. In any area where there's sort of a tension between private school and public school, you want to be careful talking to any parent. A parent who's paying twenty-thousand dollars a year to have their child in private school certainly feels that that's they way you have to go and they're definitely going to push you in that direction and make you feel a little guilty if you're not willing to shell out the twenty-thousand dollars for private school. A parent who chooses public school but could afford private school is making another kind of decision. They're going to want to justify that decision, “No, this is really a great school, this is a wonderful school, if it weren't of course I'd put my child in private school.” So everyone's got a little bit of an agenda to push and you want to take it all in and you want to think about it, and you also want to take it with a grain of salt and make your own decision.
