NY Mag: The Brooklyn Preschooler Glut

Now I wasnt much better as a (public) HS student, but if I was paying 20G+ a year for my kid to go to HS, I'd be pretty upset if they spent most days smoking cigarettes and weed all day - which based on my observations is the dominant activity for a sizable portion of the older student population at St Anns.

They're learning skills that will come in handy in the real world.

it's good this artist has no kids, because i couldn't even imagine sending them to public high school. ever.

Ok, someone's got to stick up for Stuyvesant here.

My wife went there and says it was good. No word on the pre-school program, though.

There. I did it.

brooklynpotter wrote: sorry drano, i forgot to mention that there are a few public schools on par with private: stuy and hunter, bronx science,

etc

Having taught at an elite private school in NY, I can say that the private schools have more $$ per students and smaller class sizes but your kids education is ONLY as good as the teacher in the classroom. And there are lazy uninspired teachers in both private and public schools (and great teachers at both). I say don't give up on public education so quickly

brooklynpotter wrote: the problem remains that a larger group of kids from the private schools get into really good colleges, and admissions departments can be selective. not to mention the fact that some college counselors at public school aren't always top notch. (case in point: my friend grace, who has a bryn mawr BA, UVA masters, cornell PhD, and is a classics professor at a top college. our "local" guidance counselor at my highly ranked public high school told her she wasn't the "bryn mawr type." )

But you are assuming that you get a better education at a brand name college but NPR did a few segments on this and that you actually get a better UNDERGRADUATE education at the second tier schools and state universities. Graduate school is a different story because that is where the "name" faculty want to teach. Depending on how you define success of course, statistically more successsful people graduate from state universities (by success though i don't mean yearly income so if that is what you want for your kids---then of course the brand name schools definitely help with that networking. George W. case in point). But if you define success as innovation, creativity, public service, politics, start ups, more people come from the state universities then the ivys actually.

then we agree to disagree. there is scholarship $$ out there for the taking...

and to WTGuest: and when these kids graduate from college and start job hunting who do you think will get the great jobs first?

come on, let's not kid ourselves here. (and let's not discuss W this early in the morning.) yes, you can come from a bad neighborhood and a bad school and pull yourself up buy the bootstraps and get yourself into any number of great schools. and i'm not putting that kind of success down at all. but at the end of the day there are far more kids who did well because of the credentials these schools give them.

I hope that when I'm looking at schools for my (hypothetical kids), my future wife and I choose to find the school that gives our kids the best chance of being well-adjusted members of society rather than putting them on the fast track to going to Elite School X.

brooklynpotter wrote: and to WTGuest: and when these kids graduate from college and start job hunting who do you think will get the great jobs first?

come on, let's not kid ourselves here. (and let's not discuss W this early in the morning.) yes, you can come from a bad neighborhood and a bad school and pull yourself up buy the bootstraps and get yourself into any number of great schools. and i'm not putting that kind of success down at all. but at the end of the day there are far more kids who did well because of the credentials these schools give them.

I was actually talking about middle class kids whose parents can advocate for them and navigate the public school system but don't have 100k to spend on elementary or high school. Poor kids are at a real disadvantage since their public elementary school experience is not equal. Once you fall that far behind, I think it takes an exceptional person to pull themselves out of that but that is a whole other issue. I agree, an ivy will give you an edge on your first job.

linusvanpelt wrote:
Now we can disagree whether this constitutes "success," but brooklynpotter did bring it up, and I'm assuming that she was not simply referring to the power of private colleges to secure contacts in the cutthroat ceramics industry.

this is just nasty and, frankly, uncalled for. you don't know how i came to this career, and what i did before.

i didn't insult you, i insulted the public school system.

brooklynpotter wrote: then we agree to disagree. there is scholarship $$ out there for the taking...

and to WTGuest: and when these kids graduate from college and start job hunting who do you think will get the great jobs first?

come on, let's not kid ourselves here. (and let's not discuss W this early in the morning.) yes, you can come from a bad neighborhood and a bad school and pull yourself up buy the bootstraps and get yourself into any number of great schools. and i'm not putting that kind of success down at all. but at the end of the day there are far more kids who did well because of the credentials these schools give them.

I think for those of us who grew up in NY, the kids who went to those fancy private schools are kind of seen as the rich kids who weren't smart enough to get into Hunter or Stuyvesant. If you can get into one of the top tier public schools, that's way more prestigious than blowing $100K on an inferior education. There's also serious networking possibilities with the top tier public schools. And if name brand colleges matter to you, 54% of my graduating class at Hunter went to Ivy League universities (and most of the rest went to places like MIT, U Chicago, Stanford, and other top non-Ivy schools). I doubt any private school does better than that, even with all the donations those kids' parents can probably afford.

brooklynpotter wrote: [quote=linusvanpelt]
Now we can disagree whether this constitutes "success," but brooklynpotter did bring it up, and I'm assuming that she was not simply referring to the power of private colleges to secure contacts in the cutthroat ceramics industry.

this is just nasty and, frankly, uncalled for. you don't know how i came to this career, and what i did before.

i didn't insult you, i insulted the public school system.

Sorry, I didn't intend offense. I have friends who are artists and craftspeople (far more than who are businesspeople), and I totally admire what you do. I'd rather be a potter than a CEO. I was anticipating someone responding that there's more to "success" than being a CEO. So I was making the point that if you're talking about the importance of private-school contacts, it probably matters more in high-powered white-collar fields than in an arts or crafts field.

I really meant it lightheartedly. I mean, if being a potter is actually cutthroat, I stand corrected.

And by the way, I didn't actually think you had insulted the public-school system.

brooklynpotter wrote:

that said, how many kids are in each class at public high school? and if $$ were not a factor AT ALL, would you still be sending your children to the public schools (sty and hunter, etc, not included)

Like I said above, I've had my kids in both private and public schools, and I do not believe that the private school has been worth the money. If money was not a factor AT ALL, like, if private school was free? I would still tend to prefer public. My kid who's been in public school the whole time has been exposed to kids from a huge variety of backgrounds, in terms of family income, race, religion, family structure, everything. I think there's a lot of value in that. As opposed to my son's school where there are diversity meetings and diversity committees and diversity celebrations and so on but in actuality there is almost no real diversity.

I think class size is important, but it's not everything. Having a great teacher is much more important, I think. The very best teachers -- the phenomenal, life-changing teachers -- my kids have had over the middle school years have been in my daughter's public school. (Also the worst teachers.)

I think the private schools say all the right things about "values" but I don't see it reflected in the kids' behavior. The kids cheat and bully each other and steal each other's stuff just as much if not more than public school kids do. There is a serious drug problem in the high school (and yes, I know public high school kids do drugs too).

I'd just like to add that, although people have correctly said "your education is only as good as your teacher", it's even more true that your education is only as good as your parent. My wife teaches in a decent public JHS but one complaint is that so many parents are uninvolved and unconcerned, and that is reflected in her own students work ethic and attitude. On the other hand, my mom teaches at one of the Bklyn private schools, and if anything she complains that parents are annoyingly involved, to the point of being meddlesome. But her students are generally motivated and much higher performing. So as a child you get an added advantage by going into private school of being in a culture in which it's okay to raise your hand, do your homework, be smart. This is obviously a gross generalization with huge exceptions, but in fact, my wife visited my mom's school for a project when she was getting her master's, and she was amazed at how students would speak up, ask questions, engage in class discussion, etc.

I think the key difference is that if you pay $30K for something you're going to demand excellence, so by extension you end up with demanding parents and students in the private schools. When it's not your money, then there's not the same urgency. Furthermore, with private schools you have a choice so there is some competition--you might take your kid out of St Anns and put him in Packer, etc.; whereas with many public schools you are just put in your regional school no matter what. I'm also not sure how public schools are financed, but I don't think there's much of an incentive for most of them to bend over backwards to retain students, whereas there obviously is for the privates.

The main problem with privates is the social underexposure you get by being in such a small, economically undiverse environment. If there were 100x more pvts and it wasn't such an 'elite' thing to go to one, then we wouldn't have this problem.