90% of my family went to private, catholic schools. My wife and I chose to send our kids to public school for several reasons. The top 2 would be diversity and education. We wanted our kids to attend with people of all faiths, races and certainly to be coeducational. The world outside of your little bubble is comprised of folks from all walks of life. Why not develop relationships and friendships with all these kids? As for the education, I saw Walnut Hills (my kids did not attend there) had something like 14 kids attain perfect scores on their ACT test...On the athletic front, most parents live in a delusional world...a few kids from the big privates will do well in college sports but outside of football almost all of these opportunities arise from club sports... High school sports have mostly become irrelevant (I hate it but it is the truth)...for many of these kids when they step outside of the southwest Ohio mini culture and realize the world is not comprised of white, catholic conservatives it can be disarming...You send your kids to privates for a number of reasons but don't kid yourself that the education is superior.
You may want to reread my post. No where did I say the education was superior. I said the learning environment was better. The nature of private schools provide them with more flexibility in creating an environment condusive to learning. There is greater discipline and that is driven by the ability to expel students who are disruptive to that environment. I have kids attend both public and private, along with doing some volunteer work in public schools. My opinion is based on those experiences. I actually acknowledge the fact that motivated students can excel in either environment.
Mentioning Walnut Hills as proof that the education is the same is not a valid argument. WH has an entrance exam, which help support my point at creating a better environment. They are hand selecting the students they admit, which is an advantage of the private schools.
I am not sure why you brought up sports as I did not reference sports in my post. But since you did, I will agree with you. I do not believe that playing a sport at a private school gives you greater chances at playing in college. Private schools in some sports (football) have had greater success in winning at the high school level, especially in D1. But if your end game is getting your kid a college scholarship then I don't think sending them to a private school increases those chances.
As for your point about greater diversity I would agree that a public school generally provides greater diversity. That does not mean that kids who going to a diverse public school are more comfortable or accepting of people of different backgrounds. Just like it does not mean that kids attending a less diverse private school are somehow more prejudiced or uncomfortable around people of different races.
Again my post made one distinction between public and private schools, which was the better learning environment. Obviously there are many public school districts which have had excellent academic outcomes (Sycamore, Mason, Indian Hill, Mariemont to name a few). But there are also students who attended schools that don't have the same academic track record who have achieved outstanding outcomes and gone on to great colleges.
So thank you for taking the time to misread my post and debunk statements that I never made.
