The Shifting School Equation
There wasn’t room to discuss it yesterday, but we suspect the public/private school issue is on a number of people’s minds. Over the weekend, The Times ran an article about the number of people who bought their apartments in recent years with the assumption that they would send their kids to private school. Now that…
There wasn’t room to discuss it yesterday, but we suspect the public/private school issue is on a number of people’s minds. Over the weekend, The Times ran an article about the number of people who bought their apartments in recent years with the assumption that they would send their kids to private school. Now that the economic downturn has made that a more difficult proposition, they are left to confront the limitations of their own school district. In some cases, parents are even considering renting a cheap apartment within a good school district just to get access—after all, it would be cheaper than the $30,000+ tuition in Manhattan. (It’s more like $25,000 here in Brooklyn.) Question for the renters and those in the market to buy in Brooklyn: Has the school issue shifted your real estate plans since the downturn began?
The Sudden Charm of Public School [NY Times]
Photo by Steve and Sara
One reason I would consider a private school is that they have an earlier Kindergarten cutoff date – Aug 31 or Sept 1 seem to be a common date – as opposed to Dec.
I have 2 boys with October 1st birthdays. While not too close to the NYC public cutoff of Dec, they are on the young side. If I went private I would have no choice but to wait until the next year to send them, with the hope of them being a bit more mature for K.
Even if I did do this for their first year in K then had them back into public at 1st grade, I can’t help if there might be problems, since redshirting is not allowed in NYC.
Now, if I moved to NJ, most towns in NJ have Oct 1 as their cutoff date and redshirting is very much the norm, especially for boys. If I held them back, they wouldn’t be the oldest as everyone holds back their kids and not necessarily too very close to the cutoff.
But it’s hard for me to wrap my head around making the move to NJ or any suburb. My husband is all for it, as he is getting a bit worn out from Brooklyn life. He didn’t grow up here, but I did and it’s a hard thing for me to decide. I’ve ben agonizing over this decision these many months about moving to Montclair (the only place I think I can do this), but I haven’t yet pulled the trigger.
Wow, I only skimmed, but so far the key to good education is:
– involved parents at school
– involved parents at home (i.e. those books on the shelves!)
– good teachers
– a good principal
– money
– the other kids in class
Well, all of the above are important. I’ve taught in NYC public high schools since 2000. The above factors exist in different proportions for different children, schools, and neighborhoods. Sometimes an uncaring parent screws up the entire equation for their child. In the later years of high school, the kid has the ability to screw it up on their own. Individuals being what they are, with that pesky free will and all, there are only so many systemic cure-alls that can be proposed. They will all fail because not all individuals, especially kids, fit into preconceived boxes. When I hear some politician proposing a solution for education, I run! Joel Klein has done a lot to whip bad schools into (slightly) better shape, but I’m at a good school, and he’s been horrible to us. We used to have over twenty elective courses in my department alone and had the budget to pay for them – not anymore, not anymore, not in this land of NCLB and standardized tests. I can’t teach the two electives I put my heart and soul into designing – another reason why I’m quitting at the end of this year.
We left Park Slope about one and a half years ago for Hastings on Hudson, and miss Brooklyn a lot. However, our daughter, now a fifth grader, LOVES the Hastings schools. She had attended Berkley Carroll in K and 1, and the Children’s School in grades 2 and 3, so she knows what she is talking about regarding Brooklyn’s desirable private and public schools and she thinks that the Hastings schools are at least as nice as Berkley Carroll. Also, we just bypassed the whole middle school angst we would have had to go through in Brooklyn.
Its all about involved parenting.
I went to some of the shittiest public schools on earth — in England and in France — but my parents were well read, involved in my schooling and made sure I did OK. They weren’t super ambitious over the top modern parents either (this was the 70s), just regular working people who knew that public schools offer a great education if you know how to use it. I would send my kid to any public school wherever I happen to live. Its the same as everything else, we make society what it is by our action and involvement or by inaction and apathy.
I went to a wide variety of schools and sometimes the reputation of a “good” public school has little to do with the quality of the teaching and everything to do with the type of students.
I went to a sub-academic Christian junior high where we were taught evolution was a hoax, a private prep high school where all the teachers had master’s degrees in the subjects they were teaching, and a public high school that supposedly is one of the best in the country — with the insane house prices to match.
I learned the most at the private prep high school where all the teachers had master’s degrees in their subject. New York private schools sound similar. But so do the famous magnet schools such as Stuyvesant and Hunter.
The education at the public school was a joke. Naturally the students scored high on SATs and went on to highly rated colleges because their parents were all professors and engineers with advanced degrees.
Lechacal, any advice for a brilliant friend of mine who wants to be a lawyer and doesn’t have a college degree? Good luck with the birth.
rf, I agree with you, which my comment above about choosing 11 over 20 might not indicate. What makes a school “good” might be different to different people. Which is why some schools that are more “buttoned down” as you say and concentrate on test scores and a more traditional approach appeal to some parents, and schools embracing a more creative and progressive type of education seem to appeal to the “newcomers.” At none of these types of schools (BNS, PS 11, PS 8, PS 261) have I seen kids or parents running wild or a loose environment – education and respect are highly valued, it’s just that the educational goals and means may be different. The parents aren’t running wild and running the school, they are welcomed to become involved in ways that help the schools function better (as classroom or lunchroom aides, field trip chaperones, fundraisers, etc.)
My daughter went to PS261 when Smith Street had stores with no obvious source of business and there were men playing dominos all day/night (I actually liked that — I always felt safe). There was a “new program” there — with wonderful (mostly), committed teachers but it was by lottery. We were lucky (and made a non-refunadble downpayment at Packer as a back-up) that she got in.
That said, I cannot help thinking of what a woman (a child psycologiswt/teacher, I believe) at children’s birthday party said to me 20 years ago. She said “She could learn in a box.” Her view, with which I tend to agree, is that most children of educated, involved parents do not need the best school. It is the children with the least who do. So parents do not have to be so fearful of what they may consider to be less than ideal schools — at least for K-5.
I know families on my old block in Clinton Hill (zoned for the dreaded PS56) that bypassed PS11 a couple of blocks away to send their kids to PS20. 2 of these kids are in Stuyvesant now.
If I am not mistaken, PS20 was always a good school and served the kids in its catchment area and beyond whose families sent them there. Perhaps the newbies have a different idea of what is a good school, but if the principal changed his school to accommodate the new parents, what would that do to the families who were happy with the way it was?
It’s been my observation that your average Clinton Hill/Prospect Heights/Crown Heights/Bed-Stuy African-American family has different values than your average white family in the same nabe. They can see what can happen if a school has no security (i.e., if parents have the run of the place) and if wild and crazy kids are not controlled. Their neighborhood school serves them well by being much more buttoned down than the newcomers would like. Maybe in a perfect world they’d like a looser environment in their kids’ school but they know what the principal is dealing with and prefer safety and achievement.
This does not make them less concerned for their kids’ education. It’s just a different educational philosophy that has worked for them and perhaps the principal is standing up for the families that have sent their kids to his school for many, many years.
Colonel – take a chill pill (and then help me get this pole out of my ass) – check the tone of your posts – I was trying to play with your own words. Sorry you took offense.
But now I understand that your primary complaint about the woosiness of parents in fleeing rather than getting the principal at PS 20 fired is motivated by your concern for property values in the neighborhood. Feel free then to volunteer at PS 20, donate money, or even if you think you can get it done, forward complaints to the DoE. But please don’t denigrate the parents who attempted to create change there but failed as somehow lacking in gumption. The last thing they had on their mind was creating a better school so that you can charge more for your one-bedroom rental across the street.