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Why Pay House Premium "for Schools" Instead of Private Schooling?


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2011 Jul 31, 3:24pm   34,906 views  147 comments

by bmwman91   ➕follow (5)   💰tip   ignore  

I am not a parent yet, but this has always sort of irked me. People get frenzied over which school district they are buying into and certainly, will seem to overpay for a house to get their kids into some school. Why is it that so many people take no issue with dropping an additional $100,000+ on a house to get at a school, but balk at the notion of private schooling? For $100,000 you could send your kid to a number of private K-8 schools and a college prep place like Bellarmine at $15k per year. It does not seem to compute. Thoughts?

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28   thomas.wong1986   2011 Aug 1, 11:04am  

ih8alameda2 says

it's a bit laughable that people want to blame the RE whores for inventing the importance of a good school district.

REA come up with all the 'marketing' talking points for you to overpay but in the long run it may not prove right. Certainly REA no longer use the Booming Tech Sector as a reason to overpay as they had 10 years ago. Since then we had a pretty nasty implosion in current number of Tech employers/jobs. Someone need to keep telling them to STFU.

29   thomas.wong1986   2011 Aug 1, 11:15am  

bmwman91 says

My own experience has been that WHERE someone went to college matters a bit less than WHAT they did there. I'll definitely say that my Ivy League & MIT colleagues get a lot more attention from head-hunters, but we are all less than 5 years out of college. Among my older coworkers, it seems to matter a lot less.

Tech workers over the years, many still around come from SJSU, SCU, UCB, UCD, Chico, Sac State etc. Few more recently come from IVY league/MIT or even Stanford. Practically unheard of when I started in Big 8 or Tech. So much older employees are not that impressed. SV wasnt on the public radar screen for many years-decades and often ignored.

30   avpmenlo   2011 Aug 1, 1:34pm  

I completely agree with Laura's comments on the schooling! we are living in Menlo Park and actually had to pull our three sons from the high API public schools here for those very reasons.

We are now fortunate enough to have over paid for school real estate while paying tuition for private schools. Imagine how thrilled we are with that backfire!

However, we are going to put our house on the market as we are located within walking sitance to both Oak KNoll and Hillview here and the houses are currently flying off the market to get into the "great Menlo schools!" We will move to the fringe area of Redwood City, near Alameda, but still close enough to commute to their school and work.

We tried it and it wasn't for us. By the way BMR, our son got accepted to Bellarmine with honors and will be attending in the fall. Couldn't be more proud!

31   bmwman91   2011 Aug 1, 2:55pm  

AnotherLaura says

while a lot of public schools waste time with group projects involving gluing stuff to pieces of poster board

Haha. Yeah, there are a number of aspects of "progressive education" that seem sort of nonsensical. It is great to allow kids to express themselves, but discipline & learning what consequences are seem to be pretty important too.

avpmenlo, congrats. Make no mistake though, your son could wind up getting stoned in the senior parking lot at lunch. There were a few kids that skipped classes & smoked pot regularly. Bellarmine has a well structured discipline system, but you still need to ride his ass all the way through. It should round him out pretty well too with their community service requirements & heavy emphasis on social justice on top of more traditional academics. It also makes attending a co-ed college something to look forward to haha.

Funniest memory: Sex-ed class during sophomore year was classic. Instructor walks in, looks at his clipboard & counts off the attendance. "32...no 33 students, OK, so 33 experts on masturbation..."

32   civilsid   2011 Aug 1, 3:14pm  

I have no children and do not live in your area but having read much of the above, it seems that the discussion is basically return on investment but not one person that I read about discussed the return on investment of the superior education, just the increase in home value, and the tax deductibility of the home vs. the non-tax deductibility of the school.

What about having brighter kids that will make more money? Care to discuss that? Maybe they will help mom and dad pay down the horrendous mortgage or school loans becuase they are more successful.

Then again, playing devil's advocate, I grew up in a small town with more cows than people in upstate New York with 2 brothers, 4 sisters, and a dad that was a blue collar worker busting his arse to put chow on the table. Somehow, I turned out OK and already have 4-5 more money in my retirement than he does; and yes I went to the public school.

Consider that maybe the kids are bright or not bright, have a work ethic or do not have a work ethic. Apples do not fall that far from the tree!! Some are sinkers and some are swimmers. I don't think the school system makes that big of a deal. The parents do and the work ethic does. I did better than my father because I don't have 7 kids and I did not grow up on a farm. That simple. Same work ethic and same intelligence, plus or minus.

Yes, I took different arguments on the same topic, I do not claim to have a corner on the market, just want to bring up stuff I did not see already discussed.

33   avpmenlo   2011 Aug 1, 3:20pm  

Thanks, bmr,
I'll stay on him. He has two more brothers that will be coming through, so I need him to stay on top of it!

Hilarious visual on the sex-ed class...at least they have a good sense of humor!

As you and so many others point out, parenting is the key.

34   B.A.C.A.H.   2011 Aug 1, 3:24pm  

civilsid says

the discussion is basically return on investment but not one person that I read about discussed the return on investment of the superior education, just the increase in home value, and the tax deductibility of the home vs. the non-tax deductibility of the school.

Yep, that's the kind of people that've been attracted to the Bay Area in recent decades.

Welcome to Our World.

35   thomas.wong1986   2011 Aug 1, 3:48pm  

Sybrib says

civilsid says
the discussion is basically return on investment but not one person that I read about discussed the return on investment of the superior education, just the increase in home value, and the tax deductibility of the home vs. the non-tax deductibility of the school.

A real "Return on Investment" discussion would include parent recouping their cost of education with interest in the future when their kid gets a job.
Nope, havent heard of that ever happening.

36   conservativethinker   2011 Aug 1, 4:52pm  

patrick.net definitely attracts smart and funny folks... rarely do I see comments with such different inputs and thoughts all articulated nicely with a dash of humor. now go screw yourselves.

no, seriously, i didn't realize private schools could cost as low as 8k per year?? I live in LA, where public schools are 90% bad everywhere and your 11 year old smoking pot while munching on shrooms are part of the ciriculum... but I was under the impression that private schools will cost 25k per year minimum.

but i think it does come down to proper parenting, work ethic, and you can't just rely on daytime school anymore... you have to really push your kids with extra circular activities (piano lessons, swimming, kumon?)

37   tts   2011 Aug 1, 5:35pm  

OO says

Bellarmine or those more affordable, religious schools have an acceptance rate at top colleges far behind the best public schools in Palo Alto, Cupertino, Saratoga etc.

They're probably focusing on standarized testing or some such. In general private schools are hyped all to hell and gone but the reality is they're almost never any better than public schooling yet cost more. Which is old news (http://www.livescience.com/2575-study-public-schools-good-private-schools.html) but for some reason, usualy political, the whole "private schools are better!!" thing won't die. The reality is no school private or public or even the "good ones" in affluent or rich areas, are some sort of guarantee at producing a more educated child, ultimately the parents have to follow through at home and be involved as much as possible to help their children learn.

This is however time consuming and difficult, and usually both parents work full time jobs these days, so for the vast majority of families the reality is they're stuck relying on the school to do nearly all the work for them.

The end of effective parenting for most American families is the true and most awful cost of the Dual Income Earner Family IMO.

OO says

It is not like you can just let you kids go to a crappy elementary school and jr. high, and then transition him to Philips Exeter overnight. So even for one kid, you are talking about a difference of $200K+ tuition disregarding inflation.

Perhaps its just me but for even a filthy rich family to spend $200K on schooling 1 child is just obscene and foolish. I really really doubt you're going to get your money's worth of schooling. More than likely its just another version of "keeping up with the Joneses" for people with more money than sense.

OO says

People are not stupid, especially those who can fork over $1M for their homes.

Stupid? No. Foolish? Sure, you can be rich and foolish as well as poor and foolish. Plenty of rich folks got reamed out in the .com and housing bubbles just like everyone else. Plenty of them waste their money on pointless things like everyone else too.

Just because the rich do it doesn't mean everyone else should aspire to it or to see it as good...

And just because everyone else is doing something doesn't mean you should either.

38   Michinaga   2011 Aug 1, 8:36pm  

What I don't understand is why people buy million-dollar [i]houses[/i], shackling themselves to onerous mortgages and the stress that comes with that, just to live in these great neighborhoods. Why not go for an apartment that costs what a house in an ordinary neighborhood costs, and relieve yourself of all that risk?

In my area of Tokyo, there's one great public school near the university that everyone wants to send their kids to. Advertisements invariably mention it. And while you can buy a million-dollar SFH there, few people do. They buy 3BR apartments for half a million (or less) and get the benefits of the school district at a "regular" premium rather than a ridiculous, insane premium.

39   Hysteresis   2011 Aug 1, 8:42pm  

the normal people i know that went to great schools, did just okay.
they would have done the same if they went to an average school.

most people aren't taking into account the child's capacity to take in the additional benefits of a top-rated school. meaning if you're average, a great school will help but not as much as if you were gifted

people are badly confusing correlation and causation.
* because gifted people are gifted, they go to great schools and do great things.
* average people go to great schools do average things.

it's not the school but the person that determines success. average people think if you mimic a gifted person by going to the same school, this average person will have the same success which is far from the truth

it's kind of like the hippopotamus thread:REALTOR argument for owning a hippopotamus‏ except in this case, it's "parents argument for going to great schools". the school is the hippopotamus.

40   seth.engstrom   2011 Aug 1, 10:36pm  

Springer, Blach, Mountain View HS, UC Berkeley. Public schooling was fine by me.

41   AnotherLaura   2011 Aug 1, 11:29pm  

To add something to my overlong prior post:

(6) If you are on a tight budget and both parents work, be sure to compare the cost of your area parochial schools offering before and after school care to the cost of the before and after school care plus transportation offered in conjunction with the local public school. You may get quite a surprise, especially if you have two or more children. As a further benefit, at the parochial school your child stays at the same campus all day, while with the public school option there is the daily fear that little Tommy will miss the bus from public school to daycare and be stranded while you are at work. A lot of people just don't do the math, and end up paying more for something worse, especially since the public school invariably have more oneupsmanship with clothing, etc.

Also, parochial school runs to the 8th grade, which means all of your children are on the same campus. Your 2nd grader can be in after school daycare while the 7th grader practices basketball and the 5th grader learns to play the piano or organ. The school commute and extracurricular activity schedule is greatly simplified. The parochial school my children attended even took the younger children to swimming lessons at a neighborhood pool. My younger daughter was on the parochial school cheerleading team for a couple of years, and got all of that out of her system before (private) high school where she focused more on sports.

(7) Being the poorest family in a public school in a rich neighborhood is probably worse than being a full-scholarship kid to a swanky private school, because at a private school the kids are spread out geographically and don't usually know too much about where most of their classmates live. I personally experienced the former situation, and it was NOT pleasant. It is far better for your child to develop a real lifelong social network of middle-class kids than to be a bitter social outcast among the offspring of the rich and famous. You may think that your child is so gifted and outgoing that having the wrong car, wrong house, and WRONG CLOTHES won't stop him from being class president, but you are mistaken.

I also agree strongly with people who have posted above that avoiding a bad school district is a lot more important than trying to find the perfect school. No child should have to go to school worried about being jumped in the bathroom, or being stuck in a "mixed-ability classroom" where they drill for the state exams all day, every day. Once you are in at least an average school district, there are diminishing returns on paying more and more for a house so that you can be in a better district.

42   edvard2   2011 Aug 2, 12:33am  

civilsid says

Consider that maybe the kids are bright or not bright, have a work ethic or do not have a work ethic. Apples do not fall that far from the tree!! Some are sinkers and some are swimmers. I don't think the school system makes that big of a deal. The parents do and the work ethic does. I did better than my father because I don't have 7 kids and I did not grow up on a farm. That simple. Same work ethic and same intelligence, plus or minus.

This is worth repeating. The bottom line is that just because you do this, this, and that for your kid doesn't mean he/she will automatically be a success in life. They could be sent to the absolute best schools and live in a sheltered bubble in a squeaky-clean neighborhood. They could still turn out rotten. Same could also be said for a kid who went to the worst schools in the worst area. Then again kids in either scenario could turn out to be geniuses and go on to become millionaires.

43   Tude   2011 Aug 2, 12:40am  

seth.engstrom says

Springer, Blach, Mountain View HS, UC Berkeley. Public schooling was fine by me.

I'll go even farther...

GED, Community College, UC Irvine, dropping out of public High School was fine by me.

44   Tude   2011 Aug 2, 12:43am  

edvard2 says

This is worth repeating. The bottom line is that just because you do this, this, and that for your kid doesn't mean he/she will automatically be a success in life. They could be sent to the absolute best schools and live in a sheltered bubble in a squeaky-clean neighborhood. They could still turn out rotten. Same could also be said for a kid who went to the worst schools in the worst area. Then again kids in either scenario could turn out to be geniuses and go on to become millionaires.

My husband grew up in Orinda and went to Miramonte, ended up a college drop-out. He has loads of friends from Miramonte that have not made a damn thing of themselves, and others, with mostly help from their rich parents, that are rich. He also has loads of friends that went to Richmond public schools that are happy and successful people.

I think people hyper-focused on school districts are insane, and are breeding some pretty fucked up kids.

45   SiO2   2011 Aug 2, 12:46am  

Sashi, you asked about $8k schools. In Silicon Valley, $6-8k gets a small k-5 parochial school. Basically, attached to a church, one class per grade.
$12k gets a bigger parochial k-8, like Valley Christian.
$12k-$25k gets a secular k-8. Old Orchard is one of the ads on the bottom of this page, that's $12k. Harker is around $25k.
$10k-$15k gets a parochial high school, like Valley Christian, Bellarmine.
$25k-$30k gets a secular high school, like Harker, or Castillejo.

Just to put that all in perspective compared to a $100k premium on the house. You can see that even with one kid, paying $100k which you will likely get back on resale is not bad compared to these. Of course all bets are off if Silicon Valley turns into Detroit.

seth.engstrom, those public schools (Springer, Blach, MV HS) are Los Altos, Fortress. So yes, those are considered good and worthy of a premium.

46   NYblogger   2011 Aug 2, 12:49am  

It is a complicated question. Here in NY metro area using a hypo of two kids. and comparing NYC upscale with suburb 30 mins from NYC via train. Where Tim Giethner lived when he ran Fed Reserve bank of NY (my son went to school with his son).

Decent house but fairly modest (though he bought it for 1.6MM in 2004). .18 acres and probably about 2500 sq ft. He couldn't sell had to rent for $7,500 a month. Area has 20+MM homes.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/03/real_estate/Geithner_housing_market/index.htm

They did a spoff on it on the daily show. Can find on youtube.

Anyway, NYC 1500 sq ft decent condo apartment (not luxury...non doorman, little amenities, etc) is about $1000 a sq ft and about 1.5MM. Then in NYC in the context of this audience you would be looking at private school (I grew up in public school in the Bronx in the 70s/80s and have a close and personal vantage point in the difference between inner city schools and very good suburbian schools and I have family and colleagues in some of the best private schools in NYC (kennedys, fords, etc kids go to). Private school for two let's say costs $50,000 per year (with multi kid discount -- fairly conservative). Taxes low in NYC but you are paying maintainance fee for common areas (less than a coop fee though). So PITI breaks down into ( just doing ITI as P is paying down the loan) lets say at I@5%=$75000, T@1%=15,000 and Insur+main@1%=$15000 SO $105,000 PER YR + $50,000 so $155,000 per year for apt and kids school.

Larchmont for a 2500 sq ft house on less than a quarter acre is say same cost 1.5MM. So using same equation I@5%=$75000, T@2%(higher taxes for school) is $30,000, I+M@1%=$15,000 total is $120,000.

So NYC apt is $155K/yr and NYC upscale suburb is 120K/yr. With city you have city at your fingertips all the time and short commute. With suburb you get more space and more greenspace. However, generally around here the city is going to cost more for a comparable school. (you can get decent schools in other school districts for less but to keep it as apples to apples as possible I used an upscale school suburb but it is far from the best .. scarsdale and other areas will be more expensive).

Here is the thing though. I have one son and I live modestly in a 800 sq ft 2 BR pre-war apartment in same school district (mamaroneck/larchmont) which has a decent stock of middle class housing and even some marginal areas (so school is relatively diverse) though it also has $20MM+ houses. I pay $2000 a month. A decent nut but safe, clean and my son gets a great school district. So I pay $24,000 a month vs the 120K or 155K above. If I lived in NYC and had the 800 sq ft apt I would pay $40,000 (rent) + $50000 (school) = $90,000. Sacrifice for me and wife on space but sometimes it boils down to individual preference (I want to save and I want a good education for my son so something had to give and it was the white picket fence...didn't really have an option to move as divorced and ex-wife lives here and we split time raising son). In addition, work somewhat tied to finance (not completely but somewhat).

47   SiO2   2011 Aug 2, 12:54am  

You can see a Freakonomics-type experiment about school prices in Santa Clara County.

In Los Gatos, north of Blossom Hill Rd and east of LG Blvd, there's a nice neighborhood; some houses are older, some are remodeled, some are rebuilt. The eastern part of this neighborhood is in Union district (reasonably good), the western is Los Gatos (considered better). The boundary line meanders through the neighborhood with no discernible pattern. A similar house in Union will be about $100k less than in LG.

Also, in Saratoga, north of Cox, between Saratoga Ave to the east and Saratoga-Sunnyvale to the west, it's similar. The eastern part is Moreland (reasonably good), the middle is Cupertino, the west is Saratoga. Next door neighbors can be in different schools, but the neighborhood looks about the same. Moreland to Cupertino is about a $100k jump, Cupertino to Saratoga is another $50k.

Essentially people are willing to pay a premium for these and view it as an alternative to private schools. With one kid, it's minimum $72k for k-8 and $40k for 9-12 = $112k. Max is $225+$120 = $340k. Multiply by the number of kids. A $100k-$150k price rise increase is a reasonable alternative, even considering that you'll pay interest and property tax on that increase. (Plus the interest is deductible, and the property tax may be if you dont get hit by AMT.)

48   Carl1   2011 Aug 2, 1:18am  

Realistically a private school such as Menlo will be $35K or so If, and only if, your kid a) gets in and b) doesn't get expelled. There aren't actually a lot of private schools in the area, but generally (nationwide) the better private schools will expel kids in a flash, or nearly so.

The correct choice is to a) pay extra for good schools as a backup and b) send your kid(s) to the best available school anyway. Welcome to parenthood. And perhaps you thought homeownership was expensive....

49   mdovell   2011 Aug 2, 1:57am  

"Also, while private school teachers may earn less, I do not think that it necessarily means that the quality is less. As many will note, if money was the only thing wrong with the education system we could easily fix it. "

I don't believe that throwing money at anything solves the problem. But public education has been so largely ingrained in the country that it make private look a tad odd. Then again nearly every President I can think of has sent his children to private school...maybe that says more about the system of D.C but I don't know.

I know a fair amount of teachers and most will not work in private schools because the pay is that much lower. Now I don't know if the unions are as much in private as public but you also have to consider the records. Anything that is public generally has more open records than private. A private company or any organization is under no legal obligation to provide information to someone (unless of course it is a court order).

As mentioned earlier parenting is key here. If parents don't care then the student won't really care. I just bumped into an old coworker. I thought he finished his undergrad in business. Apparently he failed out! He didn't even blink an eye. He told me his parents financed it. This might be on a tangent but if you read William Easterly's White Man's Burden (it references the Kipling story the book itself is about foreign aid). If people do not pay money for something then they have no ethical right to complain.

When you think about it how many people just easily rent an apartment to get their students into a school or how many have parents pay for private. If there is no sense of ownership or a stake then they might not have the performance.

Testing is such a mix because on one hand test results are the easiest way to determine if a student knows the subject at hand. Others might look at it as simply a form of memorization. On the other hand often times it is the learning process that can transfer from one subject to another, that is much harder to quantify within the boundaries of a standardized test.

The funny thing about standardized tests though I will say is that if it is standardized then it completely nullifies the idea of the teacher presenting anything really different. Khan Academy teaches the vast majority of what K-12 will have...and it is free. Websites do not care what time it is and what day it is and do not go on strike etc. I don't think that schools in general are really prepared for what the internet and ebooks will bring in the future.

Now we have "helicopter parents" that want to monitor everything 24/7.

It wasn't that long ago that students walked home from school, did not have cell phones, did not wait in a car at the bus stop, did not have "play dates" etc.

50   commonsense   2011 Aug 2, 2:56am  

@Sybrib You wrote, "I never did drink that Cool-Aid." I am with you there, neither did I!

The more I take a serious look at this smoke and mirrors Wizard of Oz'esk real estate bullshit of the past ten years it makes me realise how utterly insane the public really are.

51   conservativethinker   2011 Aug 2, 3:17am  

Thanks for the response SiO2. Some additional thoughts:

- Since there are generally more elementary schools per area. One approach is to get a place near a top rated elementary school, get K-5 covered. Then pay for 6-12 of private schooling.

- There is definitely an education bubble or something crazy going on. We are talking minimum 25K for just K-12 schooling?? College is almost that much now. You have to hope your K-12 private schooling will get your kids a scholarship to college, otherwise, you are talking about a half a million dollars per kid for their schooling (in today's dollars)

- I really believe alternate forms of education are going to start coming up to compensate for the point above. THis could be some type of "group home schooling" - which could be a group of families getting together and sharing tuition costs for basic education (math, language, etc)....maybe something like this exists already, i don't know. You combine that with a ton of extra curricular activities where your kids get exposed to other things and develop social skills by interacting with different people in different activities. Maybe you go spend your two weeks of summer vacation in different countries and enroll your kid into 2 weeks of some local educational program.

- also, i believe math, language(s), arts, social activities and sports are really the only core specialities kids should focus on... everything else will be driven by the kid's natural interests and passions

52   greatape   2011 Aug 2, 3:21am  

Had to post my first ever comment on this thread.

Its not always "fortress" areas that people are clamoring to get into. We were homeowners (debtors) in Hayward when we had our son in 2003. We sold that house and bought a very similar home in Fremont because that school district, while not as good as cupertino, etc, is a million times better than Hayward.
We paid approx $125k more for essentially the same house but the benefits are more than the school. Its a much better neighborhood (no bikers and gangstas) and I don't worry about my kid playing with the neighbor kids.
We could have stayed in Hayward and paid for private school....we did consider this. But he'd still have to come home to the same crappy neighborhood. I don't have a problem at all with low-income people....I've been one myself more than once!! but I do object to the thugs down the street letting their pit bulls roam all over the neighborhood.

53   chip_designer   2011 Aug 2, 3:57am  

Any public school in USA is still 100 times better than the public school system in 3rd world countries. I also don't understand why parents put so much passion on getting their kids the best schooling. Is it a feeling that one person only strives for that passion once you become a parent? Practically speaking, why should a parent sacrifice so much for the kids school, when your kid will outlive you, and no guarantee of the kids outcome. "I bring you to the world, I provide you love, food and clothing and basic necessities, and toys, then after you finish public high school, it is all up to you!". The world is very complex, younger generation will suffer more, they will need to work harder.

54   David12345   2011 Aug 2, 4:56am  

Ok, this is what I think the best solution: RENT a place with good school. BUY when your kids are out. That what we did.

55   pkowen   2011 Aug 2, 4:59am  

edvard2 says

That said, after moving here from NC it seems that people are a little nutty about schools. It seemed like most everyone I knew back home just went to a public school- the one they were zoned for- and that was that. They sent us runts on our way and somehow things were fine.

EXACTLY. It is completely nutty here. What I find really amusing is all this 'Tiger Mom' business which seems to focus entirely on credentialing the child rather than building a capacity for critical thought. You can see it in the adults they turn into. Great at math, poor at thinking.

56   foxmannumber1   2011 Aug 2, 5:13am  

PersainCAT says

you know the one thing no one has brought up yet is the fact that for the vast majority of the country private schools are not available.


Where i grew up there simply WASN'T a private school to choose. My parents bought a house that was 30 miles from work so that we could be on the edge of the best school system in the region. It may not have been 100k premium (it being very rural) but there was a 5-15k cost to live in that school district over the less desirable ones.

Private schools mostly exist in areas where white people are not the super majority. Outside of the south and large metro areas private schools are mostly unnecessary.

White liberals enable undesirable minorities to move into their general area and then they spend insane amounts of money on self segregation.

57   leo707   2011 Aug 2, 5:19am  

AnotherLaura says

To add something to my overlong prior post:

Well written with good info, don't worry about it being overlong.

My kids are not in school yet, and I have been thinking about a lot of the things you mentioned. Thanks for sharing you experience.

58   tatupu70   2011 Aug 2, 5:26am  

foxmannumber1 says

Private schools mostly exist in areas where white people are not the super majority. Outside of the south and large metro areas private schools are mostly unnecessary.
White liberals enable undesirable minorities to move into their general area and then they spend insane amounts of money on self segregation

Wow. Lovely thoughts there.

59   leo707   2011 Aug 2, 5:38am  

foxmannumber1 says

Private schools mostly exist in areas where white people are not the super majority. Outside of the south and large metro areas private schools are mostly unnecessary.

White liberals enable undesirable minorities to move into their general area and then they spend insane amount of amounts of money on self segregation.

Sooo... no brown kids = no need for private school?

Your suggestion to "white liberals" is to take a page from the "white conservative" playbook, and keep the brown kids out of their neighborhoods?

Yes of course, I see now, because white people are never undereducated bad-influence idiotic assholes that I would not want to expose my children to.

60   commonsense   2011 Aug 2, 5:43am  

In the very best areas of old money White liberals aren't wanted for their precise hypocritical reasoning. Again, these threads make clear how crazy the public happens to be. Today private schools are what public schools were 25 years ago but short of home schooling entirely necessary unless the brat is smart enough to be in independent study. The public schools today in the USA are a huge babysitting enterprise and they cannot even do that effectively.

61   Carl1   2011 Aug 2, 5:49am  

There may be an element of class isolation (keep us away from all those POOR people) in some private school decisions. I don't buy that it is racist beyond the implied racism when many minorities are on the bottom rungs of the ladder.

Some people view their job as parents to provide the best possible training in the period 0-18 years so that kids can survive and thrive in the world. For them it makes perfect sense to get the best possible education, as they see fit.

A narrow focus on "education" does mean that the child may miss out on learning how to get along with the populace at large, including poor people, in this country. C'est la vie. A good private school will send a lot of kids to the Ivy Leagues, and even if the Ivy Leagues were to have no educational value whatsoever, their networking advantage will give kids a huge advantage.

62   commonsense   2011 Aug 2, 5:55am  

I hate to inform everyone of this harsh reality. If you think you are sending your kid to an expensive school and it is going to do something magical for them beside keep them from minorities or thugs of all persuasion, you are dreaming. I went to the best public and private schools before going independent study with some of the richest kids in the country, and for all the best schooling money could buy? Nine out of ten couldn't find their asses without two hands and a guide. Hence, there goes the tony school theory, parenting is what matters ultimately but we are here to discuss real estate not where to send the brat to school.

63   Carl1   2011 Aug 2, 6:00am  

The joke on education generally is that the value of schools, universities especially, is in their networking (who you meet) and their signalling value (somebody reading your resume in 45 seconds will see "Princeton 2008" and put you in a separate pile).

How many people use whatever they spent 4 years learning in college in their daily life?

64   leo707   2011 Aug 2, 6:02am  

Carl1 says

There may be an element of class isolation (keep us away from all those POOR people) in some private school decisions. I don't buy that it is racist beyond the implied racism when many minorities are on the bottom rungs of the ladder.

Yes, also you need a critical mass of "rich" in-order to have enough rich kids to justify a private school. Urban areas have a greater density of "rich", and therefore more private schools.

Carl1 says

A good private school will send a lot of kids to the Ivy Leagues, and even if the Ivy Leagues were to have no educational value whatsoever, their networking advantage will give kids a huge advantage.

Social is probably one of the most important factors in career "success", but the networking advantage at the Ivy League level is not available for the "average" student.

It goes along with what AnotherLaura wrote above:
AnotherLaura says

It is far better for your child to develop a real lifelong social network of middle-class kids than to be a bitter social outcast among the offspring of the rich and famous. You may think that your child is so gifted and outgoing that having the wrong car, wrong house, and WRONG CLOTHES won't stop him from being class president, but you are mistaken.

65   leo707   2011 Aug 2, 6:12am  

commonsense says

Hence, there goes the tony school theory, parenting is what matters ultimately but we are here to discuss real estate not where to send the brat to school.

I don't think that the data backs up your point that "good" schooling is worthless, but from what I have read you are correct on the parenting aspect. The most important element of scholastic success is parental involvement.

Whether you like it or not a big part of real estate, for a lot of people, is where their sweet little angels are going to be going to school. So, don't expect this to be the end of that type of discussion.

66   leo707   2011 Aug 2, 6:18am  

Carl1 says

somebody reading your resume in 45 seconds will see "Princeton 2008" and put you in a separate pile.

This does happen, I have seen it happen.

However, that is not the big networking edge from going to an Ivy League school.

The big advantage is from the people you went to school with suggesting/offering you positions without ever accepting resumes from anyone else. This social advantage is only available to those from families of the wealthy elite already. Your middle class student is very unlikely to make these types of connections.

67   leo707   2011 Aug 2, 6:30am  

PersainCAT says

As a note the advantage of a "good public school" is that they cant kick my kid out for a petty reason and there's a lot less BS and politics that i need to be involved in when compared to a private school.

Is kids getting kicked out of private school really that much of a worry?

From what I understand in talking with parents of kids in "rich" public schools the politics can be pretty annoying, but I am not sure how this compares to a private school.

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