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Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

Getting a gauge on private schools in my experience is difficult because each family's situation is different. There are the typical non-denom prep schools which cost a car payment every year. And then there the private religious schools which are more of a sliding scale. Prices go down further if you have scholarships, being a member of their church, parent volunteer, etc.

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I've seen $15k up to ~$50k /yr (non-boarding—I've seen boarding as high as $70k)

The ~$15k ones tend to be Catholic or otherwise religious, and quality varies from "worse than the local public schools, actually" up to "notably better than the local public schools, though not as good as a really good private school".

Some cheap secular schools are only a little more expensive than the bottom end of the religious ones, but they don't tend to be much better than average public-school quality (nb. that may still be a lot better than some particular public school district)

Always take the opportunity to note that public schools cannot refuse anyone. Private schools can kick out low performers if it could help raise the average student performance on standardized tests.

Yes, of course, they benefit hugely from the ability to select students. They're also less answerable to parents or the public than public schools, in many way, which can free them up to ignore stupid demands from parents (they select families, as much as they select students)—or free them up to maintain stupid policies or approaches that could never fly in public schools, which is sometimes exactly what their customers want (as in the case of e.g. fundamentalist religious schools). They're more answerable to the set of expectations they've created for their families, than to the particular whims or desires of any given family, or any constituency present in the broader public.

... which doesn't necessarily mean preferring a better school that's only better due to selection bias (and knock-on effects from being able to remove very-disruptive or low performing students) is a bad way to go, at the individual level, if one has that option. The observation's more relevant to policy-making, than to the relative merits of those options to any given family.

They also don't have to cater to special education students (although some private non-profit schools do, for sure), and they don't have to subsidize special education funding with normal student funding.

One of the consequences of our state (Washington) going to a state-wide student funding model is that public schools really don't want to lose their non-special education students, because they get a fixed amount of money per student and if they lose too many of the students to private that don't need (and don't get) extra resources, they don't have enough funding to provide programs to the rest.

> They also don't have to cater to special education students (although some private non-profit schools do, for sure), and they don't have to subsidize special education funding with normal student funding.

Yep, absolutely, and that part of their ability to select their students is a major factor in the "look, private schools can educate kids for less than public schools spend, with similar or better outcomes!" sort of stats that get passed around.

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