Around here, the honors classes are just classes of average kids with whiny parents. I wouldn't give a shit if they scrapped 'em.

We’re thinking pretty seriously about private school for our kid all the way through graduation. This stuff is getting insane. Our local high school district just cut the gifted & talented program DESPITE an exploding tax base due to Covid inflows.

I get the argument “Trag if you pull your kid from public school then their funding decreases and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!” I just don’t care any more and am basically waiting for my wife to catch up. I don’t view my kid as a testing ground for my particular ideologies about the world; my objective responsibility is to support her getting the best education we can provide her, and I just don’t see it happening in our local public schools any more. I may feel different if this were, say, NYC or something.

My daughter is a senior at a private high school. She went private from pre school to now her last year. My wife mostly wanted it because it was “better” and I balked at the costs. But now I believe it was a good idea.

I was a public school kid, and both my grandfather and sister were/are public school teachers. My wife went to private school. Life is funny, grass is greener, etc...

Is your girl's school secular or religious? We're opposed to the latter, but the former is in short supply in our neck of the woods. I'm less concerned with artistic/cultural exposure in the classroom, because we can supplement that ourselves as needed. I'm more concerned with exposure to entrepreneurship, and more importantly, a mentor pool that is well-paid and not bogged down in overfull classrooms and administration micromanaging.

Private school teachers are paid less than public school teachers, trag.

We’re thinking pretty seriously about private school for our kid all the way through graduation. This stuff is getting insane. Our local high school district just cut the gifted & talented program DESPITE an exploding tax base due to Covid inflows.

I get the argument “Trag if you pull your kid from public school then their funding decreases and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!” I just don’t care any more and am basically waiting for my wife to catch up. I don’t view my kid as a testing ground for my particular ideologies about the world; my objective responsibility is to support her getting the best education we can provide her, and I just don’t see it happening in our local public schools any more. I may feel different if this were, say, NYC or something.

Private school teachers are paid less than public school teachers, trag.

i'd always been a public school champion as well, but we're going the private route for the same reasons. hard to argue with the teacher to student ratio difference, as you mentioned.

What's the public system like in Chicago? Are there lots of magnet schools like NYC?

yes

still no bueno though? Why does NYC get it relatively right I wonder?

i suppose i should say we're keeping our options open. chicago public schools don't currently offer 3K, so we're going private for that. down the road, we could always pivot to public again.

we do have some friends that, at the time, lived downtown and were in a highly rated district and excited to send their kids. then things were reorg'd and they weren't anymore, so they decided to go private and love it. so there's stuff like that happening in the big messy city too.

Very often the case, yeah. But not always. And the teacher:student ratio and curriculum at least have the capacity to be significantly better (though not always the case)

Seattle SD is fucking terrible. Mainly the suburban SD’s are great (on the “Eastside” which is Mercer Island, Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, Redmond). But the big city - Seattle - terrible.