Currently trying to decide how to school my kids ages 3yr and 1yr. Public, private or homeschool. Parents who have been there, How did you choose?
We re-assessed every year and decided with the kids what their education environment would look like each year.
One of them, our extremely musical daughter flipped between homeschool, private and public school several times until we found a university model school that worked well with her needs (lots of schedule flexibility to do extra-curricular music things).
You don't have to choose one way and stick with it. Your children's needs will change in ways unique to each of your kids.
[Edit] Also, schools change year to year depending on staff and pupil turnover. There's no honor in torturing your kid with a school situation that is just not working for them, especially if you have other options.
Usually at least two of them were in the same school. The oldest three were each 18 months part, and the youngest was three years younger than the next oldest sibling.
I took some, wife took others, ride share, public transportation (the kids in public school rode the city bus). The kids also learned to be okay with the idea that they might not get picked up as soon as school let out, or they might have to get dropped off half an hour (or more) before school started. They learned to deal with it the same way my wife and I did when we were their age.
All of which became phenomenally easier as they got old enough to drive themselves (and their younger siblings).
It was a lot of juggling, but it was still less work than homeschooling all four of them (which we did for a couple of years), and they generally didn't start going completely separate directions until they hit high school age.
Private: We didn't see an upside in our region. Public schools are excellent. The local private schools don't perform materially better (once you adjust for public schools being required to serve low-income and special needs students). Downtown private schools would have had an upside, but at great expense ($35k+/year) - we thought saving that money for college was a better idea.
Public - we chose to live in an area with excellent public schools (both because of the schools, but also proximity to jobs, liked the area, etc).
Public schools have their problems. But most can be mitigated by "voting with your feet", paying attention to local politics, and being actively engaged with the school.
I would like to note that this is tantamount to voting with your wallet. Areas with more expensive housing will have better public schools.
Some actual variety among the good schools where some truly are better, but the vast majority of the difference across the whole spectrum is selection bias, if we're talking graduation rates, college entrance outcomes, test scores, that kind of thing. All the usual measures.
[EDIT] point is, the main thing you're paying for is for your kid to be around other kids whose parents could also afford to pay more for housing, plus keep a couple cars running regularly to handle the commute, and so on, whatever the barriers happen to be for the district/schools in question.
And also said knowing full well that moving is neither easy nor cheap when a family is involved.
My wife was actually a teacher in the local district before we had kids, so we know how things go down.
The key is parent involvement. The more involved you are with the school, the more you'll hear about how your kid is actually doing "through the grapevine" which will give you a chance to address any issues at home.
My wife plans to volunteer most days of the week, and I will also try to go at least once or twice a week in the morning.
I know that is not suitable for everyone, because you have to have the flexibility to do that, and I know I'm very lucky that we have that flexibility.
- The adult tending the bus line who berated our daughter when her name was called but she didn't respond because her name was mispronounced and she didn't recognize it.
- The teacher who disciplined our daughter who was an advanced reader and finished a story quickly and then offered to help another student who was struggling but this wasn't allowed in the classroom.
- The immense amount of time wasted between classes not teaching.
- The music teacher who thought young kids were incapable of learning to read sheet music and had made up his own notation system.
- The teacher who was 8 months pregnant who would shortly leave the classroom and then there would be a series of substitutes with no continuity for the students.
And on and on.
Anyway, it worked well for us. It doesn't for everyone. My wife and our kids got along well. My kids turned out to be pretty good students. We could afford it. My wife who was otherwise unemployed enjoyed it.
We leveraged a ton of external resources: joined a secular homeschool group, co-op teaching, outside language and music teachers, extension classes offered by local science museums and universities, online courses, had our kids take a yearly standardized test to measure their progress, registered with the state as a homeschool, kept diligent records, kids did summer camps, karate, dance, were on sports teams, etc. I never would have guessed how booked our calendar became. I sometimes think we would have had more time to do things as a family if they'd stayed in public school. There's this idea you can take offseason vacations but this doesn't really work out because everything else you have your kids do is tied to a traditional school calendar.
It's a huge commitment and was a full time job for my wife. My son expressed some desire to go to high school but later changed his mind.
Anyway, you can try a year of homeschool and see how it works for you. We know lots of families who did both. For some it didn't work because the parent/child relationship isn't the same as teacher/student and for some of our friends the latter just didn't work out.
Also: there are many styles of homeschooling. Some will run things just like a traditional school but at home: fixed lesson plans, schedule, room to learn in, etc. At the other end you have unschooling. We took a middle ground. My wife has a lesson plan for the year, breaks it down by week. But we give our kids flexibility on each day. As they got older my wife would just put their daily or weekly tasks on a whiteboard and leave it to them to complete:
Good luck.
2) Private's often as bad or worse—just being private doesn't mean it's an improvement. Private schools often pay worse than public (total comp) so consider what sort of employee pool they're drawing from. The exceptions tend to be the "prep" variety which are less common and are eye-wateringly expensive unless you're fairly poor (most have generous scholarships) but nonetheless capable of raising a kid who the admissions folks (for whatever reason) like. If you can't afford even-more-expensive boarding schools you're probably looking at just a couple quality private schools in a given city in most cases, if any, and they may not be close to your house. Exceptions include some (only some, you gotta do your homework) Catholic schools, though you may have trouble getting in and will likely pay more if your family's not Catholic—there's a process, and you can probably fake your way in, but it'll take time and commitment and planning in advance by at least a year, I'd say, plus you gotta be comfortable, you know, repeatedly lying to clergy. If you want something that breaks out of the typical mold[1] you're either talking seminar-type classes (so, prep, expensive, and not available everywhere) or hippy-dippy might-work-for-your-kids-hard-to-say-until-you-try unschool-alike stuff (still not cheap).
3) Homeschool's wicked-expensive too if you're losing a salary for it, especially with just one or two kids. Not every parent's cut out for being home alone with the kiddos every day, all year, too. Some are, some aren't, may not figure it out until you try. Also not everyone's great at teaching though if your kids are above-average in the intelligence department it's not hard to at least do better than your average public school, given the pace they move at and the much worse instructor-to-student ratio. It's real work, though, regardless.
Exceptions all over for the above I'm sure, but that's the gist. We're doing public. I kinda hate it but the other options are out of reach for one reason or another.
[1 EDIT] by "typical mold" I mean isn't structured more or less the same as public school.
as an aside unschooling often gets neglected from the public/private/homeschool dichotomy, for certain personality types it may actually work better than the other three although i can see why it is a somewhat terrifying option to consider.