Americans love to rank, rate, and grade everything.
A reader suggested this ranking of America’s private schools.
It doesn’t consider how many students took AP courses, how many got a certain score on the SAT, or how many graduated. Very likely, none of these schools would release that data.
Instead, they are ranked from 1-50 based solely on how much they cost.
Now that is comprehensible.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Notice that almost every one of them is in N.Y., Conneticut or Mass. Why is that. And yet one of the highest performing public high schools in the U.S., Whitney High School in Cerritos, has one of the most inexpensive campus’s ever seen and they perform at the very top for over 25 years. Why is that I wonder? Maybe, someone should take a trip and check it out. They would be happy to show you.
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I really love this thought, George Buzzetti. What IS their secret?
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I’m confused by the success of these schools. How do they maintain such a high quality of education without the valuable data provided by state assessments? How do the teachers know whether they are doing a good job without Student Learning Objectives?
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Wonder no more…
(From a Mission Statement of one school)…”…the School needs to be mindful and proactive as it works to maintain the high quality of teaching at XXXX. We recognize that, in order to attract and retain the very best teachers, we need to continue to create a professional atmosphere that both rewards excellence and supports a community of learners. With an ongoing commitment to competitive compensation (they have competitive COMPENSATION) in place, professional development is a critical lynchpin in creating continued excitement and renewal among teachers and staff. Finally, for students and teachers the most precious resource in school is time (they have TIME!). As we work to improve the quality of life (they value QUALITY OF LIFE!)for those who work with the young women our school serves, we must be mindful of the time necessary for teachers and staff to plan (they can PLAN!) , to interact (they INTERACT!), to collaborate (they COLLABORATE!), to grow, and to expand their personal and professional horizons (they have PERSONAL horizons; they have PROFESSIONAL horizons!)). Since contact between students and teachers is the most important component of the learning process, we need to find ways to ensure that the resource of time is used to the maximum benefit of our girls.
-Supporting factors: Student/teacher ratio- 1:7, Class sizes: Lower school-14, Middle/Upper school-17 ; K-2 have 2 teachers in each classroom.
-Annual Tenure Party to honor faculty and staff in recognition for achievements of 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 yrs of dedication and longevity.
-“…the overwhelmingly positive commitment to the mission of the School have created a strong, ‘cohesive’ group of educators
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Re the “Annual Tenure Party” — 20 years’ service is indeed reason to celebrate when you don’t have tenure.
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They did not rank Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, California, which only charges $31,350 a year tuition but is academically ranked in the top few private schools in the nation. It has consistently produced more successful students going on to the major universities in the US, and then becoming leaders in all fields, than any other West Coast, and most East Coast prep schools. Harvard-Westlake makes great efforts to keep their student body diverse by offering significant scholarships and other forms of student aid.
Too many people still think of California as the Wild West. It is the academic quality that should be ranked, not just the tuition payment ability of parents.
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Only 31k a year? What a Cinderella story!
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Success?
What’s that line? oh…. “They’re standing on third base and think they hit a triple”
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Yup – except that this is not a ranking of excellence, but of cost.
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I want to know their standardized test scores.
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Did anyone notice the politics of every single school location — all 50?
Progressives send their kids to the elite schools. Obama does.
Did I misinterpret the list?
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Pretty big jump there Ed. How did you determine the “politics of every single school location”? To answer your second question, YES!
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CT, NY, NJ, CA and Northern VA are all very liberal.
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It would be interesting to see the math curriculum for these schools. I’d like to see the alignment of CC to their programs.
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The pay and benefits at the NY elite private schools are well below the pay and benefits at NYC public schools. Teachers are also not required to be certified. Teachers also may be, and are, fired at will. On the plus side, the classes are small and don’t need metal detectors.
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Is this an article about the most effective or most expensive private schools? According to the title of the article, this is not a rating of effectiveness. As the title says, “The 50 Most Expensive Private High Schools In America.”
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The education is similar to what you get at the top public high schools in the leafy suburbs. But it has nothing much to do with that. The real benefit is networking. Do you think we live in a meritocracy? When you go to these schools you meet the people who matter and who have powerful parents and better yet, connections. That is the unsaid benefit of going to these schools. How do you think kids today get good jobs anymore? A college degree (by itself) isn’t worth anything. It is a scam. You need to know someone to get into the elite, high-finance (board of trade) jobs. That is what you are paying for. The same goes for the Ivy League schools. Of course there are organizations and clubs within the Ivy League as well. We do have a class system in this country. For the people who send their children to these schools, the tuition is dirt cheap- believe me. It is similar to why people join the most elite country clubs in certain parts of the United States. Yes, the middle class is dying, and that is why they are getting rid of public schools. What is the point of pretending anymore? The ones that will succeed have connections or inherited wealth. The rich never liked paying taxes so that their cook or butler could send their kids to school. What is the point? The top 1% would never have anything to do with public schools, so what do they care. Soon, there will just be the few rich and the rest will be poor. The wealthy have their own little universe that has little or nothing to do with the rest of us.
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And your remedy to make things “fair”?
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What is “fair” in your mind HU?
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As an educator trained in public schools and teaching in public higher ed, I do understand the angst of many comments…however, some of it sounds like sour grapes. I posted the note about Harvard – Westlake with a bit of tongue in cheek since it did not make the elitist highest tuition cut. Many of the schools listed do not turn out the most high academic achievers, and some are merely finishing schools.
But there are many exceptional students who far exceed the ability of their local public schools to challenge them (e.g. students who get perfect SAT scores, and could do college math such as advanced trigonometry in 6th grade, etc.). I am glad there are specialty schools which can teach at their level of need. We do not complain about Special Needs classes, but there is such a lambasting of the needs of the most gifted students. I find that petty and irrational. When meeting the needs of students, it is incumbent upon educators and parents to present the best educational opportunities possible at every level of ability.
And yes, there are social advantages for some…but looking at the top prep school graduates, they generally get into the best universities on merit. And not all are the party goers who end up greedy oligarchs.
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Ellen — these schools don’t exist because the students are extraordinarily gifted. There are thousands of children who take the same kind of idiotic entrance tests that children at Dalton and Collegiate took and score as well or better. They don’t go to Dalon or Collegiate because their parents can’t afford to spent $750,000 on their children’s pre-collegiate education, or they don’t know how to get financial aid, or they don’t even know the names of these schools because they live in a world where people don’t know stuff like that, and they aren’t alumni themselves, and they don’t have the ability to make huge donations, and they aren’t married to some political power broker or Wall Street managing director.
Sour grapes? Why should people who have to eat sour grapes be happy about that?
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This post by Diane was looking only at tuitions of private schools. Despite some monolithic opinions here about all students therein, I point out that there are some excellent academic private schools that do not only accept legacy students, but seek out inner city students and offer educations to those who would never be able to afford them. To paint all private schools, and even charters, with the same brush seems to me to be unrealistic.
Having been an educator for 45 years, still working, and an educational researcher in schools nationwide, I have seen more diversity of schooling than most teachers whose careers are in one or more schools. And of course the students who have the good fortune for any reason to attend a school that has the resources to nurture them have so much more opportunity in life. My main comments were to address the comparison of prep schools with high tuition as opposed to those with high academic standards.
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Diane–I think re enrollment that in several cases they are including lower grades. Fieldston is one example. But it’s interesting to note how small most are. They manage both small class and small school size–and all the extras.
It would be useful to have a list of the most powerful NYC and Boston big shots and list the schools they send their children too.
It’s pretty much a Northeast only list. Private schools elsewhere are just not as expensive. Nor are there as many.
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