Note that the tax rates in the US are the lowest that they’ve been in several decades. Andrew Schiff’s parents almost certainly paid more income tax than he does (proportionately).

I would be very surprised if Singapore is more expensive than NYC AFTER tax. Also how do they measure rentals in Seoul, given the completely different rental system they have there?

Guess I’ve been lucky, then? That isn’t true of the Montessori school where my son attends, and that isn’t true of the Catholic school where I work. If it were, I wouldn’t have anything to do with either of them.

Then again, neither charges $30k tuition. Perhaps not all private schools are intended as snob farms?

Fact is, he is wrong. You can disprove a universal claim with a single counterexample. I could give you dozens (though I’m more comfortable talking about my personal experience than discussing students I’ve taught).

He might have said, “most students are just as well served in the public schools as in the private schools”. Arguably true. He might have said, “many private schools offer nothing more than snob appeal”. Arguably true. But he didn’t say that — he made some exceptionally strong statements that demand refutation, and was intentionally insulting in the process TO AN INDIVIDUAL WHO MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT FIT THE BROADER STATISTICS.

“I have seen plenty of bullying and unmet needs in both public and private education.”

Sure, this is true. But in a specific situation where the public schools are not able/willing to meet the needs of a child, would you not rationally explore private alternatives? And being able to expel individuals who are physically violent is a huge advantage for the private schools.

“However, there are also rich NYC families who autopilot their kids into private schools for class reasons and then whine about costs. These people are unreasonable, and that was Felix’s point.”

Absolutely! Now if Felix had written that, I would have been agreeing with him. Apparently everybody knows what Felix meant except for Felix himself?

Felix, I was thinking a similar thing about Schiff’s neighbors but you stated it very well. It’s a bit odd for someone who supposedly likes capitalism and works at a firm which claims a trading edge to be offended that his better-trading neighbors acquired the housing he desires and won’t trade it to him as cheaply as he would prefer. The lower-class lament that they are priced out of NYC because they don’t have the background to go into finance or don’t want to give up their underpaid human-service job rings a lot truer. But I guess we won’t see those folks featured in Bloomberg articles.

Also I am going to suggest that given Mr Salmon’s accent he didn’t attend a inner city comp.

Really? I don’t know anybody who goes by “Muffy”. Guess I’m not in with the privileged crowd…

I’m not going to defend Schiff. Without going into details, he shows every sign of being a putz. But Felix went **WAY** overboard in his criticism of private education. Could he not have made his point with more measured language? And without dragging a child into it?

Suppose you’ll tell me I’m hyper-aggressive? If so, consider where I learned to be that way (and read Ender’s Game, which I didn’t encounter until I was an adult but describes portions of my childhood perfectly). Only one of the bullies I ever encountered bothered me more than once — but I want better than that for my son. I want him to grow up in safety, without needing to defend himself against anybody and everybody. Without carrying a chip on his shoulder. Without learning to be an intellectual snob (an attitude that took me years to unlearn), because that was the only way to survive an abusive environment.

Public schools are all vanilla. Private schools come in a variety of different flavors. There are valid reasons for preferring a private school for some children that have nothing to do with snobbery.

If Felix will acknowledge that simple fact, I’ll drop it.

This article is about people who have more money than most who feel a sense of entitlement to those riches, who have no idea what it is like to not have because they are the “haves” who feel slighted because they wanted more and their money no longer buys them what their parent’s money did.

I wonder, does this same person speak about how hard they work and ‘deserve more’ while at the same time speak of those on unemployment or welfare as being entitled.

I really am glad your son has a niche, but that is why you chose the school… not because you are an elitist, which IS why people make the choice… they feel their son or daughter “deserves better” than others because they have money and cannot fathom nor can they function with NOT having the money.

I read the articles Felix referred us to. “I wouldn’t want to whine,” Schiff said. “All I want is the stuff that I always thought, growing up, that successful parents had.”

That he cannot “afford” a dishwasher is laughable… yet he can afford to rent a vacation cottage and vacations.

His children, a girl and a boy, sleep in the same room. His priorities are skewed and his money management skills are non-existent and he feels entitled to ‘the good life.’

Felix also invoked universal qualifiers. He clearly wasn’t limiting his argument to Andrew Schiff. He was talking about all students, all parents, who choose private education. If he didn’t mean to do so, then he would have qualified his statements differently.

As for my son, younique, you are correct that social interaction is difficult for him. But he feels “safe” in his classroom, and the other students have been generally respectful of his peculiarities. We have offered him the option of home schooling (though that would be effectively more expensive), but thus far he continues to prefer his present placement.

He was placed in a private school because his misguided father believes he and his son will get more contacts AND as FreeNH alluded to, it is a way for snooty elitists to hob-nob with ‘their kind.’

While this IS true, there is little difference between the schools to warrant the extra costs. Classroom numbers are still large and there is only one teacher, and support staff is limited. Bullying/racism/leaving kids behind still occurs. Teachers and Principals are more likely to also be snobs and elitists so heaven help the child whose father isn’t a generous alumni…

YOU may find that not to be so, because your child has special needs that may (or may not…) be catered to by your specialty private school, but if he really needs special attention home tutoring would have been the way to go. As a teacher and a parent, you surely must know that … plus Aspergers means social interaction can be painful, so you may be doing him a disservice…

I can’t see your anger being justified given the above and to compare Felix to Limbaugh shows you are taking this way too personally. YES he went overboard calling the child “muffy” and saying “all” are elitists and snobs, but I managed not to see or feel his comments as inflammatory as they didn’t hit home to me… as I am neither an elitist, nor a snob…

Public schools exist to serve the interests of society.

Private schools exist to serve the interests of the child.

There are plenty of middle-class parents (not nearly as rich as Schiff) who make sacrifices to send their children to private schools for exactly this reason. The interests of society and the interests of the child do not always coincide.

Exactly my point, OnkelBob. Felix is making assumptions about Andrew Schiff’s motivations, about his daughter, that might or might not be valid in the aggregate but are DEFINITELY not valid in every case. Despite his use of universal quantifiers throughout.

In contrast, I’m speaking not just as a student and a parent, but also as a teacher with a decade of full-time experience in the classroom and another decade of work with high school students outside the public school classrooms. My “n” is well over 1000, possibly approaching 1500. I could fill a book with anecdotes of how specific students have been let down by the public schools in different ways.

“All children are afforded the “individual attention” they so desperately seem to need, the providers are called parents.”

Sure, and this is why children from educated/motivated parents tend to be successful academically, even in the public schools. Even if they aren’t getting what they need between 8 and 3, they can get individualized assistance after school. I work as a private tutor, working with students for one hour a week on math or science. Typically that is sufficient to raise their grades by 10 to 15 points (as long as the student is motivated).

It is definitely cheaper to hire tutors than to send your kid to private schools, however you also need to question whether or not this is the best use of their time. And children will rarely receive tutoring in more than two subjects at one time.

“Doubling staffing levels requires more than just a increase in personnel.”

Yup. And that is why a top-notch private education costs $20k-$30k a year. I have experience with both public school and private school budgeting. The equations are a bit different, but they both add up to serious smack.

“Expulsion must be balanced with the requirements of society to educate all children.”

Yes, I understand. This is why bullying will always be a greater problem in public schools than in private schools. The public schools are required by “the interests of society” to put the bullies in regular daily contact with the other children. The majority of students are the target of a bully some time during their middle school years. You can talk around that all you like, but it is a shockingly stark statistics.

“Reinvention is not simple.”

You’re telling me? I’ve spent my career as a teacher trying to figure out the question of “reinvention” in both large ways and small. The best answers I’ve found, at least for the elementary grades, look an awful lot like what Maria Montessori established a century ago.

“That he receives no sympathy is not a surprise either.”

Schiff doesn’t get any sympathy from me either, but that doesn’t excuse Felix Salmon acting like Rush Limbaugh.