Is Private School Right For You?

Level 4 - Highly Selective

Welcome Back! Earlier this week, we discussed the basics of private school. In that article, we discussed the fundamentals of private school, how it differs from public education, and some advantages of private school.

In this piece, we are going to focus on how to determine if a private school is the right choice for you. This does not get into which specific private school is better for you (more on that perhaps in a future article!) but instead focuses on the common rationales for why you send your kids to private schools and whether those rationales make any sense.

Before we dive into whether private school is right for you, there are some key assumptions we need to make in this assessment:

1. You are in a place where you have a choice between private schools and public schools

2. Your son/daughter does not have a special condition or needs that would otherwise drive your choice (e.g., they are deaf)

3. Affordability is relatively not an option, either because there are a myriad of private school choices at different price points or because you can afford to send a child to private school

4. You are in the US

With that being said, lets dive in.

Part 1: Common Reasons Parents Send Their Kids to Private Schools

There are a variety of reasons why parents send their kids to private schools. Before we get into the reasons why you should, we want to document several of the objections to public schools:

1. Public schools are inferior to private schools academically

2. Private schools allow you to self-select the environment in which your children interact

3. Private schools give you a better chance of getting into elite colleges and universities

4. Private schools are safer than public schools

5. Private schools allow greater choice academically

Public schools are inferior to private schools academically

This is a bit of an oversimplification. There are public schools in the US that are superior to most private schools, just like there are private schools that are superior to other private schools or public schools.