How can you balance your desire for the best possible academic education for your children with ensuring that they are well-rounded?

Private schools are often much better than public schools, if you can afford the fees. You could always homeschool your kids, if you think you are qualified. No better way to be sure of their education than that.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Thanks. Homeschooling is out because both my wife and I work, making that an incompatible option. Besides, I’m not a huge fan of homeschooling because I think it infringes on the social development of children.

A well-run private school should have administrators that realize the importance of not having their students be excessively sheltered or insulated from the world. It’s fair for you to ask them what steps they take to ensure that doesn’t happen.
That being said, I think a good school is adequate, and a great school is better, but a good school can make for a great education if YOU are willing to help provide some of the extras such as museum trips, regular visits to the library, art, music, educational vacations, stimulating dinner conversation, enforced reading/homework time, and so forth.

@shilolo, understood, but there are definitely social opportunities available to homeschooled kids. I think the image of awkward and repressed homeschooled kids who don’t believe in dinosaurs is a dated stereotype that is starting to die out. Like @GeorgeGee said, ultimately, the sum of your kids’ education will be up to you, as a parent. The best schools in the world can’t complete a child’s education. You are obviously aware of this, though, so that shouldn’t be an issue.

Well rounded children are produced by well rounded parents. I am a proponent of “unschooling”.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

“Well rounded” is often a euphemism for “distracted from academic excellence by something less important”.

My son just started at a public high school in the top district in California. The staff and teachers all encourage the students to be as well rounded as possible, to take advantage of the programs and opportunities. This includes encouraging EVERY kid to try a sport just for the fun of it.

I realized I’m not moving ‘til my kids are out of high school.

My point is that a good public school is worth it. And a good school will expose your child to all those things you may think they are missing. My kids do service work, volunteer for the community, work with a school with a high disadvantaged population. I think they are learning to be good participating citizens grateful for what they have been given.

I understand the problem very well. I have opted for the ‘keeping them well-rounded’ option, rather than have them be in a school of kids who are really very privileged, diverse or not.

I understand the dilemma too and I am a big proponnent of keeping kids in the public school system if at all possible. There is a great value to being exposed to a diverse community, while still having your children be engaged and stimulated. The great school in the expensive neighborhood sounds like a possible solution although it does obviate against economic diversity. Are there other, quirky neighborhoods perhaps with decent schools?

I’ve been homeschooled all my life, I’m a freshman in high school, and I’m pretty well-rounded. If it’s at all possible, look into it.

Forget about all the stereotypes of homeschoolers. Tons of people have chosen this option, and hardly any of us wear denim jumpers and bobby socks and have 12 kids.

What grades are your kids in? It’s less overwhelming if they can read and do the basic stuff already. It’s also a really good experience for older kids to help younger ones with a few of their things (My sister’s in 5th grade so I’ve done a bit of this). You learn it that much better when you have to explain it to somebody.
You don’t have to do the whole lesson planning thing. My mom never has, and I do pretty well. All she really does is hands me a book and tells me to do whatever it says, and read it for 45–60 minutes a day (most home school textbooks are written so you can do this).

As for the fear of your kids being unsocialized, there are tons of home school co-ops, which is a group of homeschool families that get together every so often (ours meets twice a month, but I would like it better if we did it once a week – there are some that do that) and have a couple classes together that the moms wouldn’t exactly be able to teach at home, like group sports, choir, drama, some kinds of art, advanced math, etc. Homeschool co-ops do projects, like going caroling at a nursing home (which we’re doing next month). You create a network of homeschool families that are interested in the same stuff as you, and you do more and more things outside of the co-op. It’s a really useful tool.

If you want more information, PM me. If I don’t know, I’ll ask my mom and she’ll probably be able to point you in the right direction.

Good luck!!

(I think the OP said he is not considering homeschooling at all.)

I live in a major urban area where there are no good schools in my neighborhood. We asked around, and were universally told that getting a good foundation early is the most important thing. So we shelled out for private school. My daughter graduated from that school last spring and is now in a magnet public school.

As to roundedness—she gets plenty of that in regular life. Also, the school dealt with all kinds of issues from racism to homophobia to bullying to dealing with pressure to have sex and on and on. The school was grounded in real life, even if it was pretty white. Just tonight, we had a dozen police officers in our back yard, flashing their lights in all directions. I don’t know who they were looking for, nor why they thought he was in my back yard, but that’s urban reality for you. You need to learn street smarts, no matter how wealthy you are if you’re going to live here.

Look at the costs. You’re going to be spending 20K per year per child for private school. Maybe more. That’s at least 1500 per month which you could put towards a mortgage to buy a big house in the neighborhood that has the good school. That’s a lot of money to add to your payments, and the interest is tax deductible, too. Your income probably will put you in the 30% tax bracket, or more, so you save money that you would otherwise be spending on an education. Yeah. I think it’s pretty clear. Buy a house in the independent district.

@janbb ooops I missed that. I have a friend who was homeschooled even though both her parents worked, so it can be done, btw.

@shilolo I think there are so many factors.

My perspective is that the child’s character is the most important.
This is followed by self-esteem and self-efficacy.

What follows depends on the kid.
For example, my kid has ADHD and loves the saxophone. It is the primary source of his esteem at school. So he goes to a school for children interested in arts.

If your kid is interested in the kind of path that would require top-notch post-secondary education, then choose a school accordingly. If they are interested in arts or sports or whatever, the let that enter the equation…

…as long as character and self-esteem/efficacy are as supported as possible.

In addition, I personally value diversity over a more homogeneous, high-socioeconomic status, primarily white student population.

Both our boys did fine at a good, but somewhat pedestrian public suburban system. Our life was rich with laughter, word play, reading and travel. One went to Brown, the other to NYU; one has a PhD and a postdoc at IBM research, the other is a successful programmer at a small environmental company. The most important thing, as @Cupcake says, is following the kid’s lead as much as you can, providing a rich homelife, and decent schooling. As I said above, if at all possible, I believe in supporting the public school.

@Cupcake Oh puhleeze…. “the child’s character is the most important. This is followed by self-esteem and self-efficacy.”
As a higher-ed educator, I have never seen a worse change in college preparation than brought about by the “self esteem” efforts. Everyone’s precious Jason and Brittany needs to be constantly stroked for doing half-assed work, and they expect to get “A’s” just for showing up. This is making American education into an international joke as colleges are increasingly having to teach basic arithmetic, geometry and algebra to entering students before they can even touch actual college math. But precious Jason earned his high school degree without them because he’s SO special and must have wonderful self esteem despite having no ability and expending no effort.

@GeorgeGee Woah… you are making a lot of assumptions about what I mean.

Some schools are not a good “fit” for the child, causing the child to suffer. This may be due to educational philosophy, lack of conflict resolution training for the staff and children, bullying, etc. This is detrimental to the child, regardless of whether the academics are well respected.

I am by no means endorsing a philosophy that children should get As for showing up.

My son has been teased in front of the class by teachers. This has damaged his self-esteem. My sister has been severely bullied by classmates, which has impacted her interest in school.

My point is only that the needs of the child must be nurtured in a positive and supportive way. This has nothing to do with grades.

For me it would depend on the age of the child, and his or her personality. If I had a child very strong in the classic academics and was very focused, I would put them in private or the more exclusive public school. If they were the type of child who is more wanting to explore many topics, does well in a less structured environment, I would go public. I think you should visit the schools, not just go on reputation, get a feel for the students, teachers, and overall atmosphere. Try to “fit” the child if possible, since you can choose. I had a close friend whose son did all of his education in Catholic schools. He was a very disciplined boy, she like having the automatic Catholicism injected, and it always suited him. Her daughter had all of these various interests, was an extrovert, and when she tried her in public school in second grade she blossomed. It was very worrisome to her to not give her a Catholic education, but it has worked out splendidly. The girl is in high school and does very well. I have another friend with a similar experience with her son. She agonized, like she was cheating her child by moving him to a public school, and it wound up to be much much better for him. I also have stories of the opposite also, where a child transferred to private school and finally hit their stride.

I wanted to add I would look at the graduation rates of the schools in question, and how many students go on to college, and what the school does to reinforce and help a child to go to college. You might even look into the education levels of the families who live in the district. If you are talking about primary school, you can still look at the stats on the high schools it feeds in to. However, Wundaywatta once cited a statistic that the biggest indicator of the succes, or social class, or education level, not sure which one exactly, was the education level of the father, and you have that covered.

I think the kids in the school matter, if they are raised to study hard and go on to college, stuff like that. There can be a lot of pressure to not do well in school, so you fit in or are cool.

For us, an education that matched their abilities was paramount. In our case, the best option turned out to be a public magnet school for gifted kids. It was a ‘school within a school’ (it was inside a regular public school), so they had lunch, gym, art, recess with children of all academic abilities. That said, it was located in an affluent rural area, so there wasn’t a ton of diversity aside from the different academic abilities. To increase that ‘well rounded’ aspect of their lives, they participated in many different clubs/sports/classes that took place outside of school. We also made sure that our kids understood that being ‘smart’, or well-educated, is just one of many ways a person can be valued. In addition to that, we exposed them to a wide variety of thought… different religions, different cultures, music, books, movies. All are a part of the process.

@augustlan Well said!

My husband and I have very different experiences with schooling. I went to public, he went to private Catholic. I had a terrible experience, exposed to a lot of things a child shouldn’t be exposed to, violent classmates, ended up dropping out and getting my GED. He succeeded in school, great education, great scholarships to college. (college is a whole ‘nother story for us lol)
Anyways, for our family, we cannot afford private school…and if we did we’d choose a Friends school, but even with the help of financial aid, and my parents, it just wasn’t something feasible for us. So, we moved to one of the best school districts in the state (I believe the country as well), we have already decided that we will sacrifice ever owning a home just so we can stay in this school district. The education itself is worth it.
But, it meant moving further from the city, and we struggle with what this means for our children. I know this sounds silly, but we feel they would be less “street smart/common sense” with moving further from where we both grew up (me being right outside the city, my husband was a little further)
So, we just know we’ll expose them to everything we can. On weekends when there isn’t a lot of homework, we’ll go to the city for the museums, and the culture. Hopefully they will be well rounded, have common sense, well educated.
We can only give so much to our children, they have to figure some of it out on their own.

@casheroo I think your kids will have the street smarts plus another experience being farther out in the suburbs. You and your husband will give them the common sense you speak of. I could have been raised in China, I still am raised by parents who were raised in The Bronx.

Take them on the subway, or use public transit to get into the city. If they get confident with that, they can start going anywhere. Also, don’t just go to the cultural centers, but walk around downtown and old city. Maybe South street. That’s especially cityish on Friday and Saturday nights. Maybe a little too much at your kid’s age. But when he’s older.