OC, my experience is private schools are generally even more inferior to public screwls. Parents best look before they leap, as in speaking with successful graduates- not other buy-in parents, or reading private screwl slick brochures with fantastic claims that may or may not be true, and have no way of verification.
For example, many private screwls give some standardized test, to "demonstrate" student proficiency. Usually these are tests chosen because their method makes the screwl look better, not because the kids actually learn better. For example, the old ITBS, in which a section has something of a weighted comparison with grade level performance. Parents are tickled pink to see their sixth grade reading at a tenth grade, or phs (post high school) level. If they compared tests, they'd find that most all the kids measure that way, and is one reason better public screwls moved away from the ITBS system. Inaccurate assessment.
Second, private screwls don't pay as well as public screwls, and often offer no insurance benefits, or retirement. Therefore their teachers, a dime a dozen, are often either unqualified, or biding time until they can get a better paying public screwl job. If you know how poorly paid the public screwl positions are, you understand why that isn't exactly attractive, and more and more rarely do you find that individual who is both dedicated, and willing to make that often thankless sacrifice.
Third, private screwls usually don't have the best quality books, computers, lab equipment, etc. Often, they use discards from nearby public screwls, or donations.
Fourth, parents are expected to participate and help with all kinds of fundraisers, so your tuition doesn't totally pay the bill. Anything and everything extra, you have to pay for, atop the tuition bill. Furthermore "full pays" can do less wrong than "partial pays and get away with it." Meaning the kid of a full pay kid will only recieve a friendly scolding for an activity that would get your partial pay kid expelled. Your partial pay kid can receive a letter of warning for misconduct which a full pay kid won't.
If you, as a parent of a partial pay, begin to ask administrative questions of the private screwl management, you may find yourself banned from campus. Full pays are totally accomodated and patronized, at least with lip service, for the same concerns.
This is a subject that Americans would do well to have a book on. But then fewer people have time to read, and the internet is replacing books. Lord knows, the internet is filled with great things, and an equal amount of bogus fraud, because it is no skin off anyone's nose to publish bogus fraud, like the investment, and therefore need for accuracy a book requires.
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