Choosing a Private School

Use this checklist to keep track of your questions and answers to those questions as you visit each school on your short list. There is a lot of information to assimilate as you make those important visits. It will be easy to forget details unless you note them promptly.

Many parents agonize over sending their teenagers to boarding school or keeping them at home and sending them to day school. The issue you really need to address is the quality of supervision you are able to give your children after school and on weekends. Let's face it, modern parents lead very busy professional and social lives. If you aren't around to see what's going on, do you know what your teen is up to?

The Advantage of Going to Boarding School

When you send your child to boarding school, you are buying the whole package: academics, athletics, social life, extracurricular activities and 24/7 supervision all rolled into one. That's just part of the boarding school DNA. It is an incredibly good deal for many thoughtful parents. Of course, she will miss her mother and father, her siblings, her own room, and all those other special things she knows and loves. But, the truth is that she will be off to college anyway in a few years. Getting a head start on leaving home is not a bad thing. It will pay huge dividends in later years as she has had to learn to cope and adjust to new circumstances at an earlier stage in her life. Teaching her to be independent is a good thing.

Living in a boarding school essentially prevents your child from being anonymous. She will be part of the school community. She will be engaged in its activities, academics, and athletics. She will be

The question and answer on the Bay Area Private Schools site says it all:

Q. Is there a ranking on California private schools?

A. There is no ranking on private elementary schools. Since the key to rewarding private school education is finding a good match for your child's specific needs, parents should not make their decision solely based on test scores and reputation.

So, the answer to every parent's question "Which is the best school for my child?" is a very ambiguous attorney's answer: "It depends!" What does it depend on? It depends on your requirements.

This video offers an overview of Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.

What are your requirements?

You and your child will have different requirements, of course. You will be looking at test scores of a school's graduates, the colleges to which they matriculate, the quality of the faculty, how competitive the admissions are, and so on. Typical adult benchmarks.

She's more concerned with what kind of kids go to the school, what her social life will be like, whether she can bring her horse to school, how much homework there is, and how difficult the work is. Typical teenage concerns.

What you must do to determine the best school for your child is to examine and discuss all the things which matter to you both. This is not a discussion that can take place while stopped at a traffic light

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance offers more reasons in support of small schools: "One of the most effective ways to improve student achievement and curb school violence is to reduce the size of the nation's schools. Hundreds of studies have found that students who attend small schools outperform those in large schools on every academic measure, from grades to test scores. They are less likely to drop out and more likely to attend college. Small schools also build strong communities. Parents and neighbors are more likely to be actively involved in the school. The students benefit from community support and the school, in turn, fosters connections among neighbors and encourages civic participation."

This TEDx talk describes using innovative teaching methods in the K-12 classroom.

Low Student-to-teacher Ratio

Most prep schools or schools offering Grades 9 through 12 have a student population of about 300-400 students. Some schools are even smaller. As well, most PK-6 elementary schools tend to be small. Of course, you will find larger and smaller schools. Exeter

Sooner or later you ought to consider a single sex school as opposed to a traditional coeducational school. Why? For several reasons. First of all, coeducational schools have only become 'traditional' or commonly accepted in the last several decades. Private education has its roots in single sex education, both in this country and in England.

Indeed, if you look at the history of most of the legendary prep schools in America, you are likely to find that they began as a single sex institutions. For example, Phillips Academy Exeter began as a boys' school. It only began admitting girls in its summer sessions in 1961 which was fifteen years after it dropped the two year Latin requirement - horrible dictu! It would be another nine years before Exeter admitted girls in its regular sessions.

So, what's really happening here? American private schools like Exeter have always pretty much mirrored the society which they seek to serve. Back in the late 1700's and early 1800's when many of these schools got their start, educating girls was not considered as important as educating boys. Those views changed over the centuries as the young republic grew and matured. So did views about education. In the 1960's and '70's single sex schools gradually fell out of fashion. In order to survive, some boys' and girls' schools merged to form coeducational schools. Others, like Exeter, saw the handwriting on the wall and moved with the times by admitting girls.

In the 21st century