The Social Impact of Private School 101
I was chatting with my neighbors about their preschool search for their toddler, and the question of public vs. private K-12 came up. When I brought up the issue of values and social impact, I realized that the topic requires a lot of background and a thoughtful presentation to be clear to someone who’s new to the subject.
Parents of a 2-year-old haven't had reason to think about these complexities, and my neighbors were receptive. It wasn’t a situation where I was guilt-tripping someone over their done-deal choices. But it's still hard to impart The Morality and Social Impact of Private School 101 in a brief conversation. Here’s a better effort.
Private schools had neutral impact on public education until some recent time, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago. Back then, public education was not under attack; schools and teachers were respected; the populace still assumed that it was worth paying taxes to provide the services that maintain a civilized society; privatization was not on the radar.
No one — and certainly not the reigning political philosophy — was trying to eliminate public school, as many forces of the right are now.Since then, a perfect storm has come howling in and battered public education. It's based in the privatization movement combined with the anti-tax, "you're on your own," anti-public-spirited attitude that has settled like an icy fog over our culture.
Meanwhile, we Baby Boomers started a trend toward the middle class's adopting lifestyles that were formerly reserved for a lofty elite (I have happily participated in this trend, I admit, when it involved world travel and good restaurants). No longer was private school reserved for the aristocracy.
Today we make demands on public schools that were unheard of a few decades ago, and no one can argue with most of them. Disabled students should have full rights (a concept that began in the '70s). Low-income and nonwhite kids should achieve equal success in school (no one in power cared about this 60 years ago). All kids should graduate from high school (it used to be the unquestioned norm for many working-class kids to drop out).
(On the other hand, I personally don't agree that it's realistic to turn all kids into college material, though that's a demand put on public school nowadays too.)
And in diverse communities, schools are expected to diversify even when neighborhoods are segregated, and are attacked when they don't manage it perfectly (though no diverse urban school district has ever achieved ideal success with this).
Teachers are bashed incessantly over these issues and untold others.
Despite all this, many (most?) public schools are giving students good educations in safe, nurturing, stimulating environments. The others are those that face a critical mass of challenges.
In this climate, public schools need all the support they can get. They especially need to enroll the students who bring with them resources, preparation for schoolwork, supportive and involved parents, and other benefits of the privileged.In encouraging advantaged families to leave public school, "you take out all the people with the power to bring change,” a former headmaster of elite Marin Country Day School declared in an October 2007 article in San Francisco Magazine, "Schools Gone Wild."
That article explored the "more-is-better" frenzy to scale up already-posh Bay Area private schools into Xanadu-like palaces of excess. Author Diana Kapp described "an educational arms race that’s almost certainly not in the best interests of the kids whose best interests we’re all trying to serve."
This doesn't mean it's wrong to choose private school if you feel that's the best thing for your kids. It's also not wrong to drive a large sport-utility vehicle or live in a gated community if you feel that serves your family's needs. I have friends who do all those things. But mindful people are aware of the social impact of those choices, and consider that in making the decision.It’s sometimes hard to get that point across, because while the negative social impact of driving a Hummer is evident to anyone well informed, the negative social impact of private school doesn't get much public illumination,
Another oddity: In San Francisco, parents regularly criticize aspects of our school district — often as justification for choosing private — when private is no better in those aspects. You'd think the expectations would be higher for private when it costs $15-$20K a year, but oddly, parents often don't seem to see that. They seem to expect MORE from the free public school.
Parents of a 2-year-old haven't had reason to think about these complexities, and my neighbors were receptive. It wasn’t a situation where I was guilt-tripping someone over their done-deal choices. But it's still hard to impart The Morality and Social Impact of Private School 101 in a brief conversation. Here’s a better effort.
Private schools had neutral impact on public education until some recent time, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago. Back then, public education was not under attack; schools and teachers were respected; the populace still assumed that it was worth paying taxes to provide the services that maintain a civilized society; privatization was not on the radar.
No one — and certainly not the reigning political philosophy — was trying to eliminate public school, as many forces of the right are now.Since then, a perfect storm has come howling in and battered public education. It's based in the privatization movement combined with the anti-tax, "you're on your own," anti-public-spirited attitude that has settled like an icy fog over our culture.
Meanwhile, we Baby Boomers started a trend toward the middle class's adopting lifestyles that were formerly reserved for a lofty elite (I have happily participated in this trend, I admit, when it involved world travel and good restaurants). No longer was private school reserved for the aristocracy.
Today we make demands on public schools that were unheard of a few decades ago, and no one can argue with most of them. Disabled students should have full rights (a concept that began in the '70s). Low-income and nonwhite kids should achieve equal success in school (no one in power cared about this 60 years ago). All kids should graduate from high school (it used to be the unquestioned norm for many working-class kids to drop out).
(On the other hand, I personally don't agree that it's realistic to turn all kids into college material, though that's a demand put on public school nowadays too.)
And in diverse communities, schools are expected to diversify even when neighborhoods are segregated, and are attacked when they don't manage it perfectly (though no diverse urban school district has ever achieved ideal success with this).
Teachers are bashed incessantly over these issues and untold others.
Despite all this, many (most?) public schools are giving students good educations in safe, nurturing, stimulating environments. The others are those that face a critical mass of challenges.
In this climate, public schools need all the support they can get. They especially need to enroll the students who bring with them resources, preparation for schoolwork, supportive and involved parents, and other benefits of the privileged.In encouraging advantaged families to leave public school, "you take out all the people with the power to bring change,” a former headmaster of elite Marin Country Day School declared in an October 2007 article in San Francisco Magazine, "Schools Gone Wild."
That article explored the "more-is-better" frenzy to scale up already-posh Bay Area private schools into Xanadu-like palaces of excess. Author Diana Kapp described "an educational arms race that’s almost certainly not in the best interests of the kids whose best interests we’re all trying to serve."
This doesn't mean it's wrong to choose private school if you feel that's the best thing for your kids. It's also not wrong to drive a large sport-utility vehicle or live in a gated community if you feel that serves your family's needs. I have friends who do all those things. But mindful people are aware of the social impact of those choices, and consider that in making the decision.It’s sometimes hard to get that point across, because while the negative social impact of driving a Hummer is evident to anyone well informed, the negative social impact of private school doesn't get much public illumination,
Another oddity: In San Francisco, parents regularly criticize aspects of our school district — often as justification for choosing private — when private is no better in those aspects. You'd think the expectations would be higher for private when it costs $15-$20K a year, but oddly, parents often don't seem to see that. They seem to expect MORE from the free public school.
- Everyone wants a neighborhood public school they can walk to. The notion of a neighborhood private school you can walk to doesn't exist, except possibly with some parish schools.
- The private-school enrollment process, with its playdates and tests and interviews and screenings, is enormously more onerous and labor-intensive than SFUSD's.
- The private-school process is no more certain than SFUSD's, depending (in both cases) on what schools you apply to. If your child is not desirable to private schools, it's far less certain than SFUSD's — you may be shut out of private school entirely.
- If your child doesn't get your chosen SFUSD school (initially), it was as a faceless number in a lottery, bad luck of the draw. If a private school rejects your child, it was a thought-out personal rejection based on a close assessment of your child and family; a decision that your child and your family were less appealing and worthy than other applicants.
The student in this unit of Morality and Social Impact of Private School 101 may now ask: But aren't private schools better? And that's another blog post, or many of them. There is not a clear-cut yes or no.
I'll finish with two points that I've made before.
- My son attends an SFUSD high school that attracts many kids from private K-8s. Kids from SFUSD schools and private K-8s (and some suburban schools) mingle in classes. There are no clear-cut lines — no pattern of private school kids' being smarter or better educated. There are smart, diligent, engaged high achievers from both SFUSD and private schools; there are struggling or disaffected students from both; there are students in between from both. When 11th-graders at the school took the PSAT (Preliminary SAT) this fall, the top scorers were announced publicly. Three students tied for top score. Two of them had attended SFUSD schools K-8; I don’t know the K-8 background of the third. That may be methodologically meaningless, but it still tells me something.
- Yes, the SFUSD enrollment process can be harrowing. It's nowhere near as bad as the private school process unless you have a perfect child whom any private school would die for. But it's admittedly not suburbia, where you really can just walk in and enroll in the nearby school. That said, many families get their first-choice SFUSD school, and the vast majority get one of their choices in the first lottery round. I've known dozens and dozens of families who have gone through the SFUSD enrollment process, and I've never met or heard of anyone who didn't get a school they were happy with if they actually stuck it out through the process (as opposed to giving up early). You know all those families you've heard of who "couldn't get" a school they wanted? They dropped out after the first lottery round and pursued something else. Honest, I guarantee it.
As a public-school advocate and SFUSD booster, I wish the process weren't so stressful. Between the fact that the most popular schools (an increasing number) have more applicants than openings, and the pressure/need to diversify schools, there's no easy answer. But you will get a school you're happy with if you stick with the process.
For the basics on public school in SFUSD, join Parents for Public Schools, http://www.ppssf.org/ .
Labels: Charters, Education politics, SFUSD Politics
16 Comments:
I agree with everything you said.
The unspoken "problems" I find with the private v. public school issue are:
1. We abuse our parents in this country, particularly mothers. This generation is more insecure about its parenting abilities than any other. Parents think, probably very unconsciously, they can compensate for their perceived parental shortcomings by giving their kids high-ticket items, whether that is clothes or private school. It allows them to sleep at night knowing that they're at least giving their kid something expensive. It starts with infanthood. You can't possibly be a good mother if you don't have that $700 stroller everyone's pushing around these days.
2. The corollary to the above: Never in our history have we, as consumers, been so inundated with mixed messages about the price of services and goods. We'll spend $3for a cup of coffee, but what we're really buying is the experience of having someone know your name and make your coffee the way you want it. Parents, then, think that "free" public school can't possibly be the same or better than an expensive private school. Of course, they completely forget that their property taxes pay for the schools.
3. I also believe we've gotten awfully independently focused. I'm not sure this is a bad thing, but perhaps that pendulum has swung too far in that direction. We no longer operate in the name of the common good, we operate in the name of the "good of our family" under the assumption that if everyone does that, then ultimately good prevails. I'm not sure that logic plays out.
4. You can always get someone to tell you what you want to hear. The availability of opinions, news, and entertainment these days is so great that it is so easy to ignore what you don't want to hear and listen to what you do want to hear. So, if you want to justify sending your kids to private school because "it's better," you can always find someone to tell you that. The concept of real debate is lost these days. We're busy, we're inundated with messages, and we need to simplify.
I get it. I'm guilty of all the above.
I had my kid in a preschool that was part of a private school that would have allowed him to stay through eighth grade. We moved him to public school for kindergarten and we could not have asked for a better kindergarten experience for him. His confidence has grown so much. I will always say great things about the private school we were in, and there are many things I miss about that school. But I don't regret my decision, and it wasn't an easy decision to make.
Good luck with your crusade in getting the word out.
i think the "gated community and driving the SUV" comment is really behind all of this.
a very small percentage of all private schools have well-chosen " scholarship" kids. as the SF MAG. stated; it's all about diversity, however THESE schools can CHOOSE their diversity!
another "benefit" of private schools..
when you pay your $15-$30,000 yearly tuition, you are basically reassured that your kid is in their OWN gated community. having playdates, doing reports, and going to dances with the RIGHT kids.
in the past, caroline has mentioned the disparity of college counselors in public vs private.
i have had both experiences, and was shocked to have 2 overworked college counselors to 600 11th&12th graders vs. a full time dedicated college advisor to 150 11th&12th graders. the private counselor scheduled regular appts and knew all the kids.. as opposed to the public school advisor who was always very difficult to see.
in terms of a parent concerned about the long term social impact of choosing a private school... FORGET IT. it is all about your kid; not the greater good.
For those new to this issue: I've previously discussed the fact that a definite difference between SFUSD and private high schools is the level of college counseling. Private high schools tend to have major handholding. The high-end ones routinely hire counselors who have previously worked as admissions officers at colleges, the more prestigious the better. (University High School's college counselor was an admissions officer at Stanford.) At SFUSD high schools, it's -- whatever. The college counseling setup varies from school to school, but our kids have to stand or fall largely on their own merits.
It's a definite difference that the most fervent public school advocate can't deny. But one point is that you can hire a private college counselor to coach your child one-on-one through the process -- and do major packaging and resume-polishing if you're so inclined -- for a lot less than the $17,000-$30,000 x 4 that private high school will cost you.
I agree with nearly everything you have said in this post, and you articulate in many ways the feelings I have about public vs private schools but have been unable to pinpoint so succinctly. However, I have one argument in reply. I believe many parents opt out of the public school process precisely because of the uncertainty of the lottery process. They have a certain element of control over the private school process, if only in their own minds, and therein lies the problem and, in my opinion, the solution. Many of these parents would stay in the public school system in San Francisco if they knew their children would be going to their local school. The uncertainty would be mitigated, and children would return to the public schools, returning much needed funding and resources for the betterment of all. Many of these parents are the same parents who raise hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for public school endowments which could be redirected toward a foundation for the public school system, one that would attract the support of other larger foundations specifically interested in helping public schools. These also happen to be, in many cases, very involved and committed parents who would use their time and energy for the betterment of all, rather than the support of the privileged few. Believe it or not, many parents who choose private schools do so out of fear and uncertainty, and would much rather send their kdis to public school.
Bottom line: San Francisco will never achieve enrollment and financial parity with private schools without eliminating the lottery system and returning to neighborhood schools. No matter how you look at it.
I agree with nearly everything you have said in this post, and you articulate in many ways the feelings I have about public vs private schools but have been unable to pinpoint so succinctly. However, I have one argument in reply. I believe many parents opt out of the public school process precisely because of the uncertainty of the lottery process. They have a certain element of control over the private school process, if only in their own minds, and therein lies the problem and, in my opinion, the solution. Many of these parents would stay in the public school system in San Francisco if they knew their children would be going to their local school. The uncertainty would be mitigated, and children would return to the public schools, returning much needed funding and resources for the betterment of all. Many of these parents are the same parents who raise hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for public school endowments which could be redirected toward a foundation for the public school system, one that would attract the support of other larger foundations specifically interested in helping public schools. These also happen to be, in many cases, very involved and committed parents who would use their time and energy for the betterment of all, rather than the support of the privileged few. Believe it or not, many parents who choose private schools do so out of fear and uncertainty, and would much rather send their kdis to public school.
Bottom line: San Francisco will never achieve enrollment and financial parity with private schools without eliminating the lottery system and returning to neighborhood schools. No matter how you look at it.
I know this seems startling, but actually, the majority of families who apply to SFUSD don't list their neighborhood school as first choice.
When the wildly popular blog TheSFKFiles
( www.thesfkfiles.blogspot.com ) ran a poll on whether families should be guaranteed their neighborhood schools, 69% of the 369 respondents said no. (Discussion on the blog had addressed the fact that "guaranteeing" the neighborhood school also means mandating the neighborhood school, and many families really like SFUSD's all-choice policy.)
I know that the view from those who haven't yet gotten involved in the process is that guaranteeing neighborhood schools would fix a number of problems, but pretty consistently, once most parents get more involved, they start seeing the nuances. What all families would like is guaranteed admission to the particular school they want -- neighborhood school or not -- but obviously that's not logistically possible any time there are more applicants than openings at any school.
I absolutely agree about the benefits of attracting many of those motivated and advantaged families back to the public schools, which is why I wrote the post. It's just that as I say, once you examine the situation more closely, you discover that it's not as simple as just guaranteeing admission to your neighborhood school. I can attest to that as a family who did NOT want our neighborhood school! (This is a separate blog item, but the school, which back in 1996 was viewed as mediocre, shabby and uninspiring, is now wildly popular -- Miraloma Elementary.)
I recognize that families may, if they don't think it through, feel that they have more control over the private-school process, but as I wrote, that's pretty much of an illusion. The private-school process is far more stressful, time-consuming and demanding, and the outcome depends entirely on whether private schools find your child and your family desirable.
I remember one mom from my kids' preschool days who discovered that her smart but oppositional-defiant child was NOT a hot property to private schools. She told me that during the period they were getting rejection after rejection from all the private schools on their list, she threw up every day. That's why I emphasized that a "rejection" (or rather, notification that you didn't immediately get your choice) via the SFUSD process is based on a faceless lottery number, not a calculated decision that one's child and family are inferior to the other applicants, as is the case with a private-school rejection.
And I know that families feel they would like to choose public but have issues with the process. So I tried to clarify some misconceptions. But also, many people honestly don't recognize that there's a values issue, a negative impact on society, involved in the decision. So my point is that I think mindful people need to understand that and factor it into the decision, just as they would if they were considering buying a Ford Expedition.
And I just have to emphasize the financial cost of opting out of the SFUSD lottery process. Let's say an average of $17,000 a year x 13 years. Let's say two kids -- not so farfetched. That's $442,000. The SFUSD lottery process generally involves a few weeks of stress and angst. But is it worth forking over $442,000 (out of your kids' college fund or your retirement savings) to avoid a few weeks of stress and angst?
I'm another parent that steadfastly supports giving all families choices. And that ultimately requires a lottery. If everyone has a choice, the lottery is necessary to allocate seats in over-subscribed schools.
At first most people don't get that choice == lottery.
I do think that more people would accept the lottery if it were a pure lottery with none of the Diversity Index weighting.
We know that DI weighting does not really work. The families that could gain advantage in this system tend not to participate.
I contend that if you altered the current system to eliminate DI weighting and run it as a pure lottery, the results would very similar and people would accept it as fair.
Hell, the current system has led to massive resegregation. Tossing DI is unlikely to make things worse.
i guess the other issue is that perhaps $442,000 over 13 years is NOT that much for the "private school "
sector?
The parents who are in the school system prefer the lottery system because it has already served them well. This is understandable. However, before the original bussing mandate and long before the lottery/ diversity index mandate, SFUSD had over 90,000 students. That was back in the late 70's. Today there are 40% fewer students in the school district and the number is declining by 1000 students every year. Clearly parents prefer neighborhood schools. That is, parents who are not yet part of the school district. You ask parents to be enlightened and see the advantages of this system but what I am telling you is that many parents don't. They don't understand it, they hear that the schools are terrible, and that the only options are to move to a better school district, or go private. No matter how you rationalize it, this is the truth of what is happening. And nothing is being done to change that. People choose other schools that are not in their neighborhood because the lottery system, which was designed to create diverity in all schools, has merely served to exclude those parents "not in the know" about what schools to try for. It's the new segregation, and serves to scare off dedicated parents, and marginalize the uninformed. Returning to neighborhood schools would not, and should not prevent parents from making choices for their kids. There are creative ways to solve that problem. It would guarantee that the students and parents in any particular school would become responsible and answerable to their schools, giving them the cotnrol to make an impact, raise money, provide suppoort, and know their neighbors.
Bussing and lottery are single handedly responsible for the decline in student enrollment in SFUSD, which has crippled the budget, along with prop 13,of course, and continues to send parents of young children out of the city. If you don't believe me, check out how many students left SFUSD the year bussing was instigated.
Seanskymom, the participants in TheSFKfiles (the ones who voted 60-30% against automatic neighborhod assignment) seem to mostly be parents in the current kindergarten application process, who have not received their assignments yet and are very nervous about it. (There are also some veterans like me reading and commenting regularly on that blog.)
And parents who have succeeded with the lottery process would still rather have had guaranteed access to the school of their choice. If we experienced parents saw automatic neighborhood assignment as an advantage, I think we'd still be likely to say so.
I'm not quite understanding your explanation for why parents are choosing schools outside their neighborhoods -- are you saying it's because they don't understand their options? I talk to such parents all the time. They're choosing the schools they like the most, where they feel their kids are most likely to thrive -- sometimes because of specific programs like language immersion, often just because they like the feel or spirit they see when they visit a school. It's definitely not based on ignorance -- the opposite, in fact.
I understand that this is what some people think: "...they hear that the schools are terrible, and that the only options are to move to a better school district, or go private..." Of course that's why we advocates encourage people to become well-informed, because that's the viewpoint of people who have very little information. The more they learn, tho more they realize that that's a misperception.
Happily, this is not really true: "And nothing is being done to change that." Parents for Public Schools is working hard to change that, and there's quite a movement of volunteer parents in SFUSD (like me) speaking out. A poster on an Oakland parents' listserve recently commented enviously that "public school advocacy in San Francisco is on fire." Information sources such as this blog, the sfschools listserve and TheSFKFiles blog are working to change it too.
It's certainly true that a lot of parents left when busing started, and that it was unpopular. It was court-ordered, of course, not something that SFUSD whimsically decided to impose. But white flight to the suburbs was going on well before that -- my own family participated in that, moving from S.F. to Mill Valley in 1959, the year I started K.
Families continue to leave S.F. for a number of reasons, but demographers say the cost of housing is the main one, though fear of the schools is certainly a factor. The city's Department of Children, Youth & Their Families has studied this pretty extensively. So no, busing and the lottery aren't really the only reason.
(The family whose conversation with me originally inspired my blog post moved next door to me after the couple who sold it to them discovered they were pregnant with twins, decided they needed more room, and learned how much more square footage they could get for the money in Walnut Creek. And before that, the family who sold THEM the house made a straight-across trade -- same price -- for a lovely home in Moraga that has to be three times the size -- my kids call it a mansion. Both families moved because they could get so much more house and land for the money in the suburbs.)
Also, the decline in public school enrollment is happening in Oakland too, which DOES have guaranteed neighborhood school assignment. So do Richmond and LAUSD. Lots of districts with school systems that are far less functional than ours have guaranteed neighborhood school assignment. Experience shows it's not a panacea.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be wonderful to have the school of your dreams in walking distance, of course. But also, note my point that families claim they have to go private because they aren't guaranteed assignment to a SFUSD school they can walk to -- yet nobody expects to get into a PRIVATE school they can walk to. Is it rational to expect MORE from a free public school than from a $15-$20K/year private?
I wonder how many of these parents who immediately leave the district when they don't get their first choice school have bothered to check out the school that they *did* get assigned to? A lot of the schools in SF have a bad rap because they are dealing with the sorts of issues outlined in the original post (poverty, SPED, EL, etc.) which place strains on the school.
I teach at Balboa High School, which has had a bad reputation in the past, and still does despite how much the school has turned around. Opinions and public perception take much more time to change than a school. We have a number of parents who thought being assigned to Bal was the end of the world, but took the time to at least give us a chance. They are now our biggest cheerleaders.
With education, like life, you get out of it what you put in it.
right on, j.dick!!!
I went to a large urban public school and would say it was possibly the worst experience I could have had, so unfortunatly I bring these experiences to bare on my decision to send my son to Private school.
I agree there is a social impact when sending a child to private school. However as bas as it sounds, where his education is at stake I have to ask: What can the school do for my child, not what my child can do for the school.
In the interest of full disclosure, I 'm posting an addendum after the first lottery round in the SFUSD assignment process for fall 2008. I'm sure the vast majority of applicants still got one of their choices, but I sure am hearing of a lot who got none of them. It seems apparent that there were some glitches, too (applicants listing Sought-After Elementary and not getting any of their choices, while other applicants were assigned to Sought-After Elementary without requesting it).
I have faith that it will all shake out in the second lottery round and beyond, though unfortunately partly because the process has driven some families to choose private when they might have gone public if they'd gotten one of their choices in the first round.
In my opinion, the SFUSD Educational Placement Center could use some watchdogging, though, and the process once again needs a good overhauling.
Some private schools give scholarship to the poor students. These scholarships help students to continue studies. Many affordable private schools of USA are helping poor students by providing high-quality education.
http://www.teensprivateschools.com/schooltypes/Private-Schools/index.html
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