Premier School Models

Have you ever thought about starting your own private school? There are a couple of reasons why you might be pondering a large scale project such as starting a private school. Perhaps you are discouraged by the lack of education options in your area and want to do something about it. Maybe you have a vision and philosophy of education which is ahead of the curve. Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori are examples of educators who established entire movements based on their teachings and philosophies. Or perhaps no school in your area is doing what you know and feel strongly is necessary and beneficial for young people. Many determined people have established private schools because they want to be able to include religious instruction in their curricula. These are just a few of the reasons why private schools get their start.

Separation of Church and State

Historically this has been one of the major reasons why private schools were established. Public schools legally cannot teach faith-based religion. So if you are a devout follower of your religion, you will probably want your children to have a thorough grounding in their faith. That's why 22,731 private schools are affiliated with a religion according to the data available from the Private School Universe Survey of the National Center for Educational Statistics. To put that number of schools in context the PSS shows that there were 33,366 private schools in the United States. Based on those statistics religious private

In 2000 choosing a private school was at a crossroads. Back then you had the traditional ways of finding schools and finding out more about them. You asked around. Personal recommendations from family and friends were an important starting point. Indeed they still are. Then you contacted schools you knew about and requested a catalog or brochures. You could also buy a print directory of private schools, if indeed one was available. (I still have a vintage copy of The New York Times Guide to New York City Schools written by Grace and Fred Hechinger published in 1968.) And you could always hire an educational consultant. Researching schools was fairly labor intensive. It also took time.

It is remarkable how all that has changed in just a few short years. First schools adopted web sites as their primary means of reaching families world-wide. The transition from the printed materials to the digital media took time as there was a certain amount of worry about whether or not the web would reach families. As we adopted the web for just about all our day-to-day activities such as banking and shopping, looking for private schools on the web just made great sense. It is so easy and convenient.

Knowing what to look for and where to look

I think that the toughest part about finding anything on the web is filtering out all

How to Convince Your Child to Go to Private School

It is a scenario that plays out more often than you might think. You have been looking at your child's high school with much trepidation. A couple of concerns keep bubbling to the surface of your thinking. For one thing, the school is enormous. While the students get a relatively good education, according to the statistics you have seen, you still have that persistent, nagging feeling that your child deserves more. Her school offers about a dozen AP courses. There are still some clubs and other extracurricular activities available. The sports program seems to focus on the football and basketball teams. The other factor influencing you to decide that you both work. Frequent business travel has become a regular feature of your life, and it looks like it will continue for many years. The bottom line is that you want your child to attend private school because it will solve some of these problems and correct some of her current public education deficiencies. But how are you going to convince her to go along with you? Let's look at some strategies and approaches that work.

This short video illustrates some of the reasons why parents consider sending their children to private schools.

Don't dictate what is going to happen.

The quickest way to turn your child against any idea, no matter how rational and well-intentioned that

Progressive schools are different from so-called traditional schools. I am not being judgmental here. I am simply pointing out some differences between the two kinds of schools so that you can make an informed decision about which private schools to consider for your child.

Until the middle of the 20th-century, many schools simply taught their students facts and figures. You memorized and regurgitated information. Indeed I can remember being taught this way at Rosyln School and Westmount High School back in the '50s and '60s. That's just the way you were taught back then. All of your academic work was focused on what you could expect to be tested on in your final year-end exams. This all led inexorably to a forbidding set of examinations known as the Junior Matriculation. If you did well on that set of examinations administered at the end of Grade 11, you went off to university for more of the same.

Progressive schools by definition are schools that espouse the ideals and ideas of landmark educators and thinkers such as John Dewey and Francis Parker. At the beginning of the 20th-century, they were considered visionary by some, radical by others. The progressive curriculum was more varied and experiential. Students just didn't sit there passively listening to a teacher lecture about the material. They actually were encouraged to learn by discovery through a variety of hands-on activities. Teachers no longer had to get through a plethora of outdated materials simply to be able to say

Dr. Maria Montessori's first Casa de Bambini in Rome opened in 1906. That school and Dr. Montessori's methods were was so innovative and ahead of their time that word of Dr. Montessori and her methods spread quickly around Europe. By 1911 the first Montessori school opened in the United States. That school was located north of New York City in Tarrytown. When you consider that communications in the early twentieth century were slow, the fact that word about Dr. Montessori did spread so quickly was remarkable. One other fact worth noting is that Dr. Montessori began her work with disadvantaged children living in Rome's poorest neighborhoods. Yet when her approach found its way to the United States, it appealed strongly to middle-class parents who were looking for enlightened alternatives to the traditional educational methods found in American schools. The following video offers a brief history of Montessori.

Nowadays Montessori schools enjoy an enthusiastic following with approximately 4,000 certified schools in the U.S. Most of these are private schools offering the early or primary grades. Only about 200 public schools use the Montessori method or some version thereof. Because Dr. Maria Montessori did not trademark the name Montessori, any school can claim to be a Montessori school. Just because it says it is a Montessori school does not mean that it is the real thing. As a result you will have to be observant and aware