Believe it or not, questions as to where we’ll send Nicole for school have already come up and she’s not yet 4 months old. Fortunately for us, because of the location of our new house we have several options: Colerain Elementry, St. John’s (where I went to grade school), St. James, or any other open-enrollment private grade school.
Karen C. reminds me that Summit Country Day is also an option. I suspected the prices were probably more than we wanted to spend on our kid’s education at this level (now if we were talking college that’s a different story; we’d pay for Harvard if she could get in!). Anyway, in case you were considering a Montessori pre-school for your three-year-old, here’s the going rate for a Summit education:
Three-day half-day $5,360
Five-day half-day $8,025
Five-day All-day $11,995
Five-day half-day $8,025
Five-day All-day $11,995
Karen did make mention that faculty get a discount off tuition. I wonder if XU would give me a discount on Nicole’s tuition if she went there… I’ll have to check into sending my 3-year old to the University…
11 comments:
I'll send you some articles I have.
Freakomomics says smart people are successful no matter what college they attend (for those who got into an ivy school and a public and some chose public).
Naked Economics says school ratings represent "who" attends and how involved their parents are in helping their kids learn. Not a result of how better or worse some teahcers and prgrams are for learning.
A yahoo article targeting poor students found almost no difference in education quality for students who went to public school vs those who used vouchers to go to private. They do list many factors they found to be important for each subject like reading and math etc. Most of the factors were "time parents spent reading to children etc"
Net my theory is kids can get a great education anywhere especially if parents are involved.
I'm curious why 2 Catholic schools would be in the running. If you don't want her to be Catholic (are not baptizing her Catholic), why then put her through 8+ years of Catholic education if you don't believe what the school is teaching. I could never figure out why SO MANY non Catholics go thru Catholic school. i.e. I would never think to send my kids to a jewish school.
I think she would enjoy going to school with her cousin. There is an instant friend on the playground too.
i think there are many reasons to choose a school other than just the education provided...and that should have some bearing in cost too...
p.s.....of course you already alluded to the ones important to you in your pros and cons list....
Martha made a good point. My 2 oldest are currently in Catholic school here in Kansas...the thought of the public school scared me so much that I almost considered homeschooling if we couldn't get them in. I wasn't really worried about them learning the Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic...but all the extra things I didn't want to have to dispute. When my son was 3 years old and going to public preschool I had to sign a form to keep them from teaching him about all sort of things including anything sex related not limited to sex, birth control, homosexuality, relationships, etc (I don't want them to know about sex of any kind at this age...I want them to be children). I almost immediately withdrew him from the program until I spoke to the teacher, whom I have known for 3 years, and she assured me that she did not know about the form and would not be covering anything of the sort in her class. I chose to send my little ones to Catholic school not only for the good classes, but a loving, caring environment that would hopefully sustain them through their childhood and continue on throughout their life. I want to have a say in what my kids are learning ...in public school the government is ultimately in charge, not the parent...and that is scary.
Wow, I'm impressed with your chart! I'm kinda wondering along the same lines...minus the Catholic school thing. I'll be going back to work teaching Montessori, so it would look weird not to have my kid in the same school, but tuition is so high. It's hard to turn down free public education if its a good school. I don't care about test scores...those are not important, more about the teachers, activities, environment at the school.
You have a few years to decide this... right? What's the rush... maybe tuition or the school overall will change in the next few years... or maybe soemthign will jump out at you.
And I wouldn't worry too too much about Ryann and Nicole being in the same school. Mary & Jill were just seperated by classes so they weren't directly compared to each other and they could each try to make their own friends but they were twins, ya know? I would more base it on cost and the education overall. I liked having a small disciplined environment. Some may want more diversity like a public. I dunno....
Another thing to think about is that St. John's and St. James are both National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence - which means that among other things, that across the board, their test schools consistantly are within the top ten percent of the nation.
The Communion thing may not be as big of a deal as you think - at my school, the students not receiving Communion still learn it all and participate in everything but the actual act of Communion. Most of the time, I have heard that the students are even at the Mass get to sit with the teacher during the service. I don't know if that's how it is everywhere though.
I could go on and on about the differences in St. John's / St. James vs Colerain LOL but here's something else - what about St. Ann's? :)
Send her with Ryann... Colerain will already start her off behind the others that go to Catholic schools. None of the students there take school seriously.
My take on this based solely on my own observations...I agree with Dave. If you and Jim are the good parents I'm expecting you to be, you'll be there to guide her. If Colerain Elem. is rated excellent, I wouldn't worry that the Middle School is only average because she'll have had the good foundation and she'll have the parents to guide her - she'll be smart regardless.
Another thing to consider is that if she ever needs any kind of special services, she'll have much easier access to them if she attends a public school. One of my brothers needed speech therapy and I remember it was a real pain to get considering we went to a catholic school.
Fast forward to high school, and the decision to send her to a private Catholic one versus a public one when the time comes. I'm not sure how things are in your neighborhood, but around here it's all the kids who go to the private schools who know where to get the good drugs...
Oh, and what they all said on the Catholic school thing when she's not going to be baptized Catholic.
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