Public schools vs. private schools

From the Children thread:

Dcc001 said: "Of course you aren't required to do these things; personally, though, I think the more education you can provide a child with, the better. And the education you get when they're packed in classes of 40 kids with a teacher who has an associate's degree isn't on par with what private schools offer. In addition, I don't want my children to begin their lives as young adults $100,000 in debt.

My parents were kind enough to pay for my university education. Due to my father's career, we lived in remote places that necessitated private schooling. I have cousins who have been educated in the public system. I also have cousins that have been educated almost exclusively in private schools. From my own mixed experience (private and separate - I went to Catholic school, not public), and from the anecdotal evidence I see in my family, private schools are LEAPS AND BOUNDS better. They prepare you in a way the public system simply does not."

MoreCowbell said: "None of these were true in my case, except maybe the latter (it's hard to compare, since I can't compare the same grade level. How does one compared a 5th grade teacher to a high school physics teacher?). And I went to a school that is regarded as one of the better non-prep* schools in a state w/ good education numbers, where over 95% of students attended 4 years schools every year.

Teenagers will form cliques and there's no way to stop that. The idea that 1) they won't figure out who is rich anyway, and 2) that you can stop this impulse by merely changing what they way really undersells the pervasiveness of that behavior.

At least where I grew up (suburban, for what it's worth), the public schools had more money per student and nicer facilities.

I can't say that the teachers were necessarily of higher caliber per se in public school, but I know for a fact that they were paid more.

You generally pay for the atmosphere, lack of distracting students, and attentiveness that the system allows for, not for the things you mentioned. It's actually possible I would have had more opportunities in public school, since the local one actually offered more AP classes than my private school did.

You're really painting public schools with an insanely broad brush here, and underselling the good ones. If you can afford to send your kid to private school on your own dime, odds are the area you live in has some decent public schools. What you almost universally can say for private schools is that they generally have a bigger safety net. It's harder to fall through the cracks there, and odds are you'll end up in college somewhere at least mildly reputable unless you truly fuck up.


* I don't know if this distinction makes sense in Canada. Prep schools are places like Phillips Exeter. Often but not exclusively residential, and tuition can rise to be in excess of $20,000. At a truly elite one, we're talking $30K+, $40K to board. Private school in my case was a much more modest local Catholic school."

Focus: What do you think of private [primary] schools? Do you or would you send your kids to a private school if you had the means? Did any of you attend a private school, and if so how do you think your experience shaped you in a way, if any, and a public school did/would not?

I will admit that I'm suspicious of private schools. The reason everyone says they send their kids to private schools is to give them a better education but I think implicity or subconciously there's more going on here. I think in a lot of cases "better education" in reality means "not exposed to ideas with which the parents disagree", espcially considering how many private schools have a religious affiliation. As I said in the other thread I attended public schools but my parents considered sending me to a private school for at least the last few years of high school. We visited one -St. John's or something like that - and I was uncomfortable. Even though I lived the first 15 years of my life in a pair of small, rural towns in Minnesota I was unnerved by the homogineity of the student body; everyone was white and seemed to come from very similar socieo-economic backgrounds. But more than that I'm inherently very suspicious of any type of institution where everyone has the same ideas & beliefs and everyone conforms to the status-quo - it's way to Orwellian for me. I think it's important to be surrounded by people from a variety of cultures and beliefs in order to grow as a person, and this is something that to me it seems private schools explicity exist to avoid, hence my distrust for them.

 

In the interest of full disclosure, I went to one of the best prep schools in America. It's currently ranked around the fourth best high school in the nation across a variety of rankings. I was friends with kids who went to private schools, and both shitty and good public schools. My brother opted to go to the local public high school for sports. In my experience, a private high school education was superior.

1. Your peers: I know I know, generally every high school kid is a shithead. However, a prep school is completely devoted to preparing you for college. My school had a 100% college matriculation rate and every single one of my friends had plans to further their education. Whether this is a good or bad thing is an entirely different debate, but when everyone around you has goals for their future, you're going to get your shit together too. You're in an environment that's looking towards the next step. And contrary to popular belief, they're not a bunch of drones in ties and blazers.

2. (Similar to the previous but...)Networking: Yes, prep schools attract a lot of smart/rich kids. I have multiple friends working in major cities who could get me a job with a call. When I had to look for internships, my high school friends' families gave me opportunities that I never would have normally had. If I'm around while there's an alumni event, I'll always drop in and each time I find a friend living in a cooler place, in a sweet job, or doing something interesting.

3. The Teachers: They care. In my experience, they were paid more, many had doctorates or masters, and they simply gave class a little effort. I remember shadowing my brother at his public school for a day when I was considering a transfer to play football at a higher level. I was shocked. He had classes where the teachers would come in, write an assignment on the board, and read a fucking book in the corner. I am still in contact with a few of my old teachers today.

4. The Facilities: Private school generally means nicer shit. I had a full library with librarians to help with research, science labs, a theater, computers with a team of tech geeks, a huge gym with trainers that would write you a workout plan, even a fucking recording studio. Anything I wanted to peruse was at my fingertips, and more importantly, I was encouraged to use it all.

Maybe my experience was the exception to the rule, but I'm beyond grateful that my parents sent me to private high school. I honestly wouldn't be where I am today if not for the opportunities I got their. Except I really wish I could've banged my hot Spanish teacher.

 

My exposure to private schools in Ontario has been one of little regulation, effectively purchased marks, and people turning out without any meaningful life skills and academically behind. I am of the impression this is certainly not the case elsewhere though.

 

I went to a private school until 8th grade, when I switched over to public. In my personal experience, public school has a lot more opportunities than private. The private school I went to didn't have musical instruments, so I've never played the recorder. (I'm told public elementary school students play the recorder.) We didn't get computers until I was in 6th grade (1999) and I was with the same group of kids from preschool until 7th grade, so we all knew everything about each other. I didn't have friends for the last three years of being there because I liked Smashing Pumpkins better than the Backstreet Boys (Please don't read this as whining, I did not like the people I went to school with, so it didn't really bother me.) Also, it was a catholic school so I had no idea there were more than two religions until I was a freshman in high school. I didn't even know there was more than one kind of Christian until that point.

As far as quality of teachers, I don't know if it is different in non-religious private education, but you got a job at the school for being a parishioner of the church. I'm fairly certain my English teacher didn't actually have teaching certification. She was just someone's mom who came in and watched as we did grammar workbooks. The only book I read for school was The Bible.

When I got to public school, I ended up being completely lost. I wasn't educated enough in math to take pre-algebra. I didn't know how to write a book report or an essay because my History class was only graded on making models and posters and the only English classes I had taken were grammar classes.

I'm Facebook friends with a few people who I went to private school with, and I think it's safe to say a lot of my classmates are train wrecks. There were 30 kids in my class: 4 of them have been arrested (grand theft auto, holding up a gas station, sex with a minor, and destruction of property), 5 of the 11 girls are teenage mothers, 3 have serious drug addictions, two girls and one guy make their living by doing porn for the internet, and 6 people didn't finish high school. This is obviously just one class from one private school and it could just be that I went to school with a bunch of people who later went on to be train wrecks, but it's how I think of private schooling.

 

If I would afford it, I would send my daughter to private school because of the all-around opportunites it opens up for both your child AND you, but this stuff is both contextual AND territorial: the schools in my city are mostly decent, practically all of them JK-Grade 8 for public, and grade 9-12 for high school (it was fucking stupid to get rid of grade thirteen in my opinion). I went to what's called The Worst High School In The City and it STILL wasn't bad, with the best technical classes in south-western Ontario.

I can't complain about my own experience in education very much, and I'm old enough to still remember the vice-principal happily slamming a wooden yardstick across the top of my hands in his office for defending myself against a bully when I was only seven years old. I couldn't close them for two weeks after that.

 

Speaking from my own experiance I'd send my children to public schools if I ever opt to have any. The reason being that unless I ever leave the area I live in right now, public schools are the best choice in my area; and the public schools are underfunded to a ridiculous extreme.

Theres three private schools in my area; the first is a bible school that offers no vocational training in any form, (I consider auto shop/agricultural classes/JROTC to be valuble beyond words). It's held in the basement of a Baptist church just a stones throw from my house, and is generally the last bastion of hope for locals that lack the disipline for public schools. The second of the three is another Baptist program that runs from preschool to kindergarten; and it's generally reputable though a bit pricey. I went there for a couple of years before I started going to elementary school, and really can't say anything bad about it. The third is a school the local Mennonite population runs amongst themselves; I've never heard much about it except it cuts off at the eight grade and the Mennonites enter the public high school. Most of them seem to be pretty sharp, so I guess it's alright.

As for the public schools they were the run of the mill for a county with a rural population and the funding to match. They did offer a good selection of vocational classes though; enough to get you started working in the trade at an entry level or a good start at a community college. That's the biggest appeal to public school for me, I know a lot of people that went through the classes and ended up getting decent starts in their careers. Not every one is fit for Ivy-league classes, or even community college and most of those people are better off in the long run just going to work after graduation.

As far as the networking issue that some of you have discussed earlier in the thread, public schools aren't entirly bad for that. The local school system has about a half dozen elementary schools, three middle schools, and one high school. If you stay within the school system and are halfway social, you're bound to meet a good chunk of the people you'll be dealing with in your life. (Assuming you never move out of the county anyway.) So when the wood-shop guys end up working as contractors, you know who you're dealing with. I'll admit this won't apply to areas with larger populations, but it's not a bad system from my neck of the woods because it works.

 

I'm somewhat opinionated on this considering I grew up on Long Island, a place where almost nobody goes to private school and then went to USC for undergrad, where a large percentage of kids went to private school. The discussion comes up a lot around here and people are always surprised when i tell them that almost nobody goes to private school on Long Island except fuck ups whose parents have too much money.

To me it really depends on the area you live in. The only people who I know that went to private school growing up were kids who went to Catholic schools, and I didn't really see a difference in where people ended up in college. My high school was a middle of the road public school and sent kids to harvard, penn, MIT, Hopkins and many other top 25 universities. I have friends from college who spent $250,000 plus on their pre-college educations, and I just can't imagine that 1+1 was taught better in private school than public.

I get that if you live in an inner city with terrible school systems than it could make a difference, but for most people it seems to be more of a status thing than anything else.

 

I'd like to give a parents perspective on this conversation since my children (6) have attended both public and private schools. But,in order for this discussion to be more pertinent we really need to define the differences in "private" schools. There are really three types of private schools. You have your prep schools - Trinity, Taft, Deerfield Academy, Harvard-Westlake etc..., you have countless numbers of private day schools and then you have your Catholic or other religious denomination schools. They are all very different for a variety of reasons.

Prep schools are typically boarding schools and nothing less than a younger ivy league type college. The parents are typically rich and well connected and the kids have a certain expectation placed on them to succeed. These schools almost always have 100% matriculation to higher education and the kids come away well prepared and ready for the challenges of future learning, albeit with an entitled attitude.

Private Day schools offer many of the same things prep schools offer - they teach the kids the skills they need to succeed with in life. Those things being time management, study skills and what it takes to learn "stuff" with or with out a teacher. They don't teach to a "test" or some standard that needs to be met in order to achieve public funding.

Religious denomination schools in my opinion, for the most part are nothing more than public schools that you pay to send your kids to so they are with other kids whose families have a similar mind set. There are some very good schools in this group and there are some very bad ones.

Public schools have some excellent teachers and some not so excellent teachers. The difference between private schools and public schools in general terms is that public school teachers can't be fired easily. In private schools if a teacher isn't doing his/her job, just like in the real world, they will be terminated. That's not the case in the public school system - it takes years and lots of money to terminate a public school teacher. On top of that, again in general terms - they don't teach kids how to learn and life skills. They teach them "stuff" in order to pass a test that will allow the school district to get more state/federal money so they can afford the mandatory salary increases for the teachers (good and bad). Don't get me wrong, there are many many, very good public school teachers that deserve every dime (if not more) that they are paid - on the other hand there are too many teachers that can't be fired and it waters down the effectiveness of the entire system.

All this being said - my two oldest went through the public system until they were ready for high school. I sent them to a private day school (because I didn't want them boarding at such a young age) and have never regretted the decision. Their transfer to college was seamless and if anything, there first year of college was too easy. They both have gone on to get master's degrees and continue to be successful.

My second two, I put into private school at the middle school level through high school with similar success as the above. My youngest two were moved into private elementary school this year and will stay there through high school. The reason being our local public schools have been rapidly deteriorating and my kids aren't being taught how to learn on their own, they are just being taught how to pass a test.

Bottom line from were I'm sitting, private education is worth every dime and is paying off in spades with my kid's futures. It is a huge financial commitment, but it will pay off in the long run.

Sorry for the long post...

 

Both categories have so much variance that it's pretty much impossible to make any kind of consistent judgment of one vs. the other. I went to one of the best prep schools in the country. In the past four years of graduating classes, here are the colleges kids most went to and how many went to each (there are about 130-140 kids in a class):

Yale 30 BC 17
Penn 16 JHU 15
Tufts 15 Barnard 14 Wesleyan 14 Brown 13
Georgetown 13 Bowdoin 12 NYU 12 WashU 12
Columbia 10 Emory 10
Harvard 9

These are the top schools in terms of numbers, not prestige. We didn't have AP English classes: they thought the English exams were nowhere near rigorous enough (they aren't) and refused to waste our time teaching to them. At the beginning of junior year, my Writing Semester teacher (required for all juniors: read Strunk & White, Zinsser, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard out of what I can remember) casually mentioned that we could take both APs at the end of the year if we wanted to, and that we would get 5s. (This same "you're going to all get 5's" speech happened in two other subjects, though they were actual named AP classes. They were always right.) I'm at a top 20 school right now and high school was significantly harder--I had to write better essays with cleaner writing and deeper thinking, I had to read more, I had to do harder math problems, I had smarter kids in my classes.

This is the exception. Only a few other private schools are like this (Think Andover, Exeter, the NYC day schools like St. Regis/Trinity/Marymount, etc.). And I'm sure there are public schools that provide that caliber a secondary education. Hunter College High School, the gifted school in NYC, is one. The important thing isn't the label on the school, it's what's inside.

A teacher once handed me back a paper that I'd bullshitted, and bullshitted pretty well. No grade-- just a 'See Me' in red at the bottom. Uh oh. I show up to his office. He says "Listen Treble, this is a good paper. The writing is clear, concise, and forcible. The ideas are developed reasonably well." As I start to preen, he continues, "and I can tell that you gave about 70%, maybe 65% of your total effort in writing it. I can tell that you skimmed the book, and picked quotations marginally applicable to a thesis you formed the night before the deadline. So I'm giving you a D+. You can rewrite it and I'll regrade it. But you better try harder. This stuff might come easy to you, but I don't care. You have to give 90-100% if you want an A. Go home and try, and don't pull this in my class again."

(If he were here right now, he would say "and for God's sake WHY did you switch tenses in that paragraph? You know better.")

You NEED this teacher. NEED him. ESPECIALLY if school comes easy to you. I can sit in English class all day and bullshit and use language in a marginally more sophisticated manner than other people. This DOES NOT MEAN I understand the material better, more deeply, or that I am smarter. It is a proclivity. It does not deserve highest marks. Effort does. Sweat does.(Obviously your papers have to be good, too, but if you're smart and try hard that's not the issue.) I learned this from private school. If you can learn it in public school, DO IT. It's hard to find anywhere: I got to college and coasted and a lot of my friends, public and private alumni alike, had serious effort shock because they were smart and didn't have to work hard in high school and that didn't cut it at a good college.

Rigor is independent. Seek it out and take advantage of it.

 

I'm a high school teacher in a public school in Sydney, Australia. For some stupid fucking reason, in Sydney, where you went to high school is a big fucking deal. It remains a big deal, 10, 20, 30 years after you leave high school. It remains a big deal, even though I have since graduated from one of Australia's top universities with two degrees.

Despite working in public education, I will send my children to a private school. First of all, do you know how hard it is to get rid of a shitbag kid from a public school. If we expel a kid from our school, if that child cannot find another public school to take them on, we must accept that child back. Yep...the asshole that assaulted one of my colleagues last year was allowed to come back to our school (well until our union kicked up a stink...he's off annoying someone else now.) Private schools can expel anyone at any time and I do not want my child's education interrupted by some of the little shits I teach.

Secondly, as it has been touched on...networking.

Thirdly - resources. Do you know how hard I have to fight to get a whiteboard marker to write notes on the board. Or that in my staff room there are two projectors between 5 staff members. Or that the laptops our kids are given in year 9 stop working at least once a week and we have a shithead technician who takes 6 weeks to fix them. Yep...I bet there aren't those problems in private schools...

As a final note however, I don't believe that sending a kid to a private school will automatically improve their academic achievement. I went to one of the worst schools in Sydney (our house was in a new estate that was zoned for the school with the majority of kids from government housing.) I did well, got the marks I needed to get into university and earned my 2 degrees. I did what I needed to do. Had I gone to a private school would I have done better...probably. My husband on the other hand went to a private school, not a top one, but still a good school none the less. My husband left school and became a mechanic. Whilst he was very good at his job, the money his parents spent was almost a "waste" as he could have achieved the same result at public school. (Not to diminish what he learnt whilst at school...but if you are looking at schooling from an outcomes base and return from investment...private school in order to achieve a trade is not an optimal outcome.)

 

I went to a Catholic grade school in the waning years of the "Reign of Terror", that is, nuns. Horrible experience for me. I then went to a private, Jesuit prep school which was a great experience and an excellent education. Where I grew up, public education, especially at the high school level, was pitiful. In fact, the public schools one town over were taken over by the state. If you wanted your kids to have a any shot at a decent college, you had to send them to one of the private schools, and I'm grateful my parents placed a high importance on us getting an education. Today, one year of tuition at my high school is more than my senior year of college.

When we moved to Texas, the main reason we bought a home where we did was the school district. However, I'm far from impressed with the local high schools. My oldest is graduating this year and in the past four years, I've heard, "Want to know what we watched today?" far too many times. A film or documentary every now and then as complimentary material is fine, but it shouldn't be a substitute. Lazy faculty. it's the best part time job in the world. A tenured history teacher in our school district makes upwards of $85k. Considering you get the summer and 5 weeks during the school year off, it's nice work if you can get it.

My youngest is headed to high school next year and we put her into a lottery for a slot in a charter school a few towns over. Private high schools in the area start around $17k per year. With one starting college in the fall, there's no way we could swing it.

 

My god is this true. I had good teachers in HS, and I went to a really good HS, but by and large, they never challenged me. Going to a public school, albeit it probably the best one in the state, and being above average intelligence, I was able to coast by in a way that probably wouldn't have happened in a private school. I, for example, struggled in the advanced math class I was in. My professor realized I was smarter than I was performing, and took a proactive approach to trying to help, but at the end of the day, he never really lit a fire in me. Whereas I had an English teacher who glowingly spoke about my writing, to the point that my younger sister had her 6 years later, the year before she retired, and finding out that she was my sister, raved about my talent and how bright I was. Yet I never received higher than a B+ in either class I took with her. Half of it was her pushing me, half of it was her sticking to a more formulaic and classic style of writing expectations I never really followed. If I had the teacher you mentioned above, I probably would have progressed way more as a writer and gotten interested in it a good 4-5 years earlier than I did.

More to the focus, as I mentioned, I went to public school through all of my pre-college education, save for 3 years in religious private school in which I had 18 kids in my grade. My parents switched me following 3rd grade cause they didn't get along with the principal at the public school (I got a concussion at recess and my teacher and the principal both reprimanded me for faking an injury and looking for attention as I was puking intermittently), but then returned me to public school at the start of 7th grade as they saw I was intellectually stagnating.

I went to a, by all rankings/scores/metrics, fantastic public school. Highly rated, sent 5-10 kids to Ivies a year, plus plenty more to Vandy/Stanford/Berkley/Georgetown/etc... not to mention other great schools in the Midwest. However, when you have 400 kids to a grade, there are going to be issues, and my school was no exception. Despite a 95% college attendance, give or take, there were plenty of shit teachers and I knew ALOT of kids who went to school and got academically raped and had to transfer. I didn't transfer, but I had significant problems initially as I had no study habits and the majority of my HS work was either coasting or rote regurgitation.

Contrasting, my best friend growing up went to a private HS that was more college prep (being as it was college affiliated) and his experience was fantastic and I can confidently say he was far more prepared for college coursework than I was. It all depends, and it depends on the kid and what they want to get out of it. But I personally feel if your child is intelligent and driven (whether or not they want to admit it or readily put in the work), private schools are going to do nothing but good things for them.

 

I had an untraditional high school experience, but I did spend some time in public high school and remember a few things. I think my school was pretty great as far as public schools go. My parents did a lot of research before we moved here, and luckily they could afford a house in a nice suburb. I'm really surprised they chose that since they both grew up in private schools.I'd like to send my kids to private school if I can afford it.

One thing that bothers me is that there were over 900 people in my class. My brother had over 1000 in his. That's ridiculous. I don't think a school that has 30+ kids in a classroom is capable of sparking critical thinking and problem solving. My high school education was mostly rote memorization, and I was in a couple of AP classes. I don't think i really knew how to effectively learn or think until I took pre-req classes for my program. That's pathetic.

Also, it sounds strange, but it's true. Being a St. Mark's alum here in town opens as many doors as being an Ivy League alum.

 

It's better to be rich.

I will send my children to private school, because it is one of the luxuries that wealth affords. It is a LUXURY, though, and should be framed as such. It's an apples/oranges comparison, like a "Rolls Royce Ghost vs. Honda Accord" thread.

 

I went to a private school. I get use from the /old boy/ network that comes from that maybe once every couple of years, and that use is somewhere between slim and fuck all if we're cold about it. My friends who went to public schools get at least as much utility from old school friends as I do from the old boy network. The quality of education I got from my particular school was probably no better and no worse than most public schools in my area.

That said, there are other private schools that I could have gone too that would have been VASTLY Different stories. I have friends that went to a couple in particular, and post highschool friends who teaches at a third that deliver things that I would have KILLED for in highschool. And I suspect that if I'd gone to one of those schools - I'd probably have ended up with very different career outcomes. I'm reasonably happy with my career overall - but I suspect I'd have had to do a lot less work to get just as far or further if I'd had the resources / direction in highschool to try a bit harder and aim a bit higher in the early days.

 

I had an interesting scholastic environment growing up, I went to public school K-6, private day 7-9, private boarding 10-12, public college fr & so, private college jr & sr. I think that both have their place but there is a obviously huge difference between grade school, middle school, high school, & college.

Going to grade school & middle school locally enabled me to make friends in my town and in many other towns in my area so I was exposed not only what went on in my little podunk section of suburbia. When I went to boarding school I met kids from all over the US & the world but felt really isolated when I returned home. I remember counting down the days during spring break so that I could return to my friends at school. The boarding school spring break in the 80's was typically over 3 weeks and while the rich kids went somewhere cool, I returned home. While I maintained some friends locally, there was quite a bit of animosity from the public high school kids towards me. I will never trade anything for my boarding school experience however, I think it made me self reliant and a variety of ways.

After I graduated from high school I went to a large southern university, quite a change from my New England boarding school. While I did take advantage of many of a large universities offerings, my studies was not one of them. I was a solid B student but really didn't care about my major or trying hard at all. After boarding school I found the foundation classes freshman and sophmore year to be a breeze and since I was drunk when I took the placement tests I didn't test out of them. Then during the "winter" of my sophmore year I sort of woke up/stopped drinking for a week and decided to try and transfer to a small private college in New England. When I arrived the small class sizes, accountability, approachable professors, & participation in NCAA DII gave me the focus I was missing down south. I worked my ass off and ended up graduating with awards in both my major and my sport.

The only advice I could give is of you are unhappy with your school situation do everything you can to change it. It may seem like you are going to school for ever but in terms of your lifetime its a very short time period and try to enjoy every minute of it. I realize that not everyone had/has the means to go to private schools or college but at least try and get that scholarship or student loan.

That said, there is no way I'd send my kid to a boarding school. Its not the $$ its what I know goes on under the proctor & teachers noses.

 

As I said in rep: "Yep."

Obviously I have a ton to say on the topic, but BrianH brings up a really excellent point right off the bat. While hard work can definitely pay off, knowing the "right" people is one of the key factors in getting ahead in life. When you live, learn, and play with successful people, doors to success are more readily available and opened to you. For m fictional children, I'd want nothing but to expose them to excellent networks right from the start.

Case in point: the public school system in my state is for shit. If you want ANY kind of education, you pretty much have to go through private institutions. When my best friend's child came of schooling age, she researched all the schools in the area. Then went one step further. As she spoke to the doctors she visited as a pharm rep, she asked each of them where their children went to school and heard one name repeated over and over again. Now she busts her ass to send her kid to that school as well not only for the primo education but for the future networking it will provide.

 

This was my experience also. I went to a private school for 6th & 7th grade. The Principal/Owner wanted kids attending so bad that she would pretty much pass anyone. I spent the majority of my 7th grade English class playing GameBoy.

On the other hand, when my brother was taking his then 5 y/o daughter to check out the local public Kindergarten; what the kids were going to be doing was so far below the level his daughter was already at* so they decided to enroll her in a private school. She's now pushing 9 and is quite far ahead of her similarly aged cousins.

*The teacher said that most kids will be able to write their name and count to about 100 by the end of the year. She was already reading and could count into the hundreds or so. The teacher literally said "Oh my, she is going to be SO bored"